People seem to be willing to spend a lot of money to live closer to others with similar economic status. Where I live, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more for an almost identical house in the 'wealthy' parts of town.
We just moved out of a ranch style 980 sq. ft. house that we sold for $45,000. My wife's friend and her family just moved to a house that's about the same size, built around the same time (maybe a little smaller because it has a garage), and it cost $150,000 in a nicer neighborhood.
I will say we really tried to give the old neighorhood a chance, most of our neighbors were great, but there was one family of renters that consistently was outside shouting and getting hauled away by the police, eventually culminating in a teen shooting off a gun (that looked like an assault rifle, we later found out it was 'only' a .22 rifle) into the air and screaming as another car peeled out and drove away, while my wife was talking to her mother on the phone on Mother's day. My two year old daughter was playing in the front yard, and it was right then we decided we had to move.
So after that we moved to a $250,000 house in a much more affluent part of town, the most expensive we could afford, because what else were we supposed to do? Before we had our daughter, we didn't really mind, but once you put kids into the equation you become substantially more risk averse.
That’s what is happening with a lot of my millennial coworkers. Once they have kids, they move from the hip area of town, to the bland suburbs with decent schools.
People seem to be willing to spend a lot of money to live closer to others with similar economic status. Where I live, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more for an almost identical house in the 'wealthy' parts of town.