santa fe?

tons of sun, altitude takes an edge off the summer heat, near green in the mountains part of new mexico, plenty of 'arts' in the area, wonderful opera house, green chillies, etc.

and elk huntin' too Bernie!
Troy

I hear San Antonio is nice - never been there.

Central coast of Ca. is high on my list... but for vash there is no opera or high end type of entertainment. I could get by on the local bar bands.

Portland Or. has the entertainment and the outdoors... but then there is the weather.

I would move to Cambria tomorrow if I could.

A second vote for Santa Fe, NM.

i do love santa fe. i was under the impression that it was big bucks.

i have land in ruidoso NM that i plan to build a cabin on.

my folks are now in SF,NM retired since 2000. they lover it there, and had been wanting to make the mover since we left NM in 1968.

family already had property there, they got to build on the upper half of lot. they split the original lot, with my uncle getting my grandparents original house on his half.
they used a contractor that already builds a couple different models that they use for bigger housing developments. they were able to customize a standard format to their needs. saved a ton overr going with custom builder & architect.
they have a very modest 3bed/2bath that suits their needs and allows room for guests when me and my sister visit over the holidays. next door neighbor was trying to sell their older very large home for $10 million for a few years but gave up long before the housing bust. decided to stay they liked the area too much to leave. so you can find something for any kind of budget out there.

some parts of living there are more expensive. but having come from Seattle they probably came out ahead considering the cost of living up here now.

this winter has been very mild. but two years ago:eek:

oh yea, my "utopia" has very lenient conceal carry laws...i'll be old, and slow. cant punch, or run....SHOOT!

Well Oregon's CC laws are pretty good. Pro-gun sheriff in my town.
Troy

Melbourne, Australia?

We love Seattle, and it meets many of your criteria. But yes, the winters can be quite rainy and gray. We had a few good snow falls this year, and it was nice actually.

I hear Australia and NZ are hard on immigration?

Eureka, CA

Several posts have mentioned Austin / San Antonio areas. Both great cities in the TX hill country with booming economies (or were anyway). Not in tornado alley or hurricane areas. Mild winters but summers can be brutal (hot / humid for weeks on end). Lots to do and many good places to eat but not sure about the ballet/opera bit ??

For fishing, a 3 hour drive to the coast for some of the best fishing there is.
Hunting: kabillions of deer in the hill country but very expensive to hunt. There is no public hunting land in TX for all intent and purposes. Want to hunt? Pay through the nose for a lease. Hunting is big business here.

No state income tax but highest homeowners insurance rates in the country, same for electricity. Also property and school taxes are high to make up for no income tax. Since our state idiots voted to deregulate electricity in 2002 we've gone from some of the least expensive to most expensive electric rates in the country. Home prices are very reasonable however.

Austin is relatively liberal politically. San Antonio leans to the conservative but nothing like Dallas or Houston.

No place else in TX to even consider.

Boca del vista

Flagstaff, AZ ?

Eugene, OR

Vash, I"ve lived in MI, WI, NH, WA , and NV by far Hills of Nevada come the closest.. no state income taxes, there is theatre in Reno ( ok the chicks have no teeth,, but work with me here), pretty good hunting, mild winters, world class biking, kayaking, skiing, boating..
You need to come on over and hang with me one if these weekends ( prefferably this fall and we'll chukar hunt)

What are you talking about? The hottest chicks I've ever seen are in Reno. Too bad they're all strippers.

Believe it or not.... Idaho Falls...budding downtown arts culture, four seasons and land. If you want small town and AWAY we a 4 acres in Ashton Idaho, 1200 people, 45 minutes from Yellowstone or Jackson Hole, and potato seed capitol of the world....winter are harsh though. Boise is really nice too.

:D I was talking about this with my attorney yesterday at lunch. Mine is pretty easy, and only a few miles from where I currently live:)

For me, it would be a large lot on the river, where I could build a house to hold all my treasures:D, nice dock for happy hour drinks, huge garage for toys, I wouldn't have a reason to leave:D Of course, with the type of private (home) bar/game room, equipped shop, everyone would be hanging out there anyway.

we honey moon in Cancun. As it turned out, we hated Cancun due to the drunken young Americans screaming in the streets with beer bottles in their hands. We came upon Playa Del Carman, on the way to a jungle tour. We had breakfast there, and we cancled our hotel out of downtown Cancun, and booked the rest of our stay in one of those smaller hotels in Player. In some of those beaches up there, there is no one around at times beside a tourist or two.

If you have land in Ruidoso, then Las Cruces would be an obvious choice. You describe Las Cruces in your original post.

(And, we have both open & concealed carry.)

Las Cruces:

College town.
Theater/ballet in El Paso (40 mins. away).
Hunting/fishing - check. Elephant Butte 40 mins. away.
No natural disasters. The occasional flash flood through the arroyos.
Very affordable housing (or spend $5mil if you win the lottery).
Solar? 360 days of sun/yr.
Temps - 50's/60's in winter (daytime), never breaks 99 in the summer (cools down at night, unlike Phoenix/Tucson/Vegas). Dusting of snow every other winter.

Will leave a light on... SmileWavy

Tuscany, Siena or Firenze.
Best weather/food/opera on the planet. Bar none.
Fantastic boar hunting in the fall.

Das, i grew up in el paso. dont know if i want a repeat. my wife doenst like it. it is debatable, if you can consider elephant butte a good fishing lake. the mega white bass runs are history, and black bass are elusive.

good property tax in NM, non existent smog logs..good outdoors. on the list.

i could definately be italian! i begged a wine owner to let me arrow a pig when i was there....BEGGED! his bow, his pigs...he politely told me no. they were running amok!

+1 on Asheville. Coincidentally, I have for sale four acres of mountain property in a beautiful equestrian-themed community called Wolf Creek Ranch near there. We planned on building our dream house there--a 2000 square foot garage for me, and some sort of irrelevant shack to live in (mainly for my wife)--but then we moved to Seattle.

Seattle is anoher great place if you handle gray weather for long stretches. the summers more than make up for the rainy winters.

Terry

I give you the food and the opera.

But the weather?

Droughts and heat waves in recent years have made Tuscany unbearable in the summers. Combine that with the insane tourism in Siena and Florence between April and October and I would run in the other direction.

I could agree on winters in Tuscany and summers in Cornwall though.

Dottore, correct as usual.
Was there May/June last year, tourism fairly light, except for the obvious attractions.
Next time we will skip the Uffizi.
National train strikes are another story

Yes, or the foothills around there. Fishing is a bit harder, but the ocean is only 5 hours away in Mexico. Otherwise, all that you asked for is there, especially if the housing prices stabilize in a few years.

It's the only million person small town left, with everything you'd expect from a million person town.

Southern France.
Ideal Medditerrainian climate, best food in the world (a melange of Spanish, Italian and French), great cultural activities (like concerts, operas and plays in an Roman colusium), world class wine, historical structures and sites abound, hunting in Europe (I hunt Red Stag (elk), Fallow Buck in Scotland, Roebuck in Germany, France, Austria and the UK, Wild pigs in France, Italy, Germany and Poland, best bird hunting is in Scotland and the UK, I fish for salmon in France, Scotland, Norway, Sweden and Finland, Trout in France, Switerland, Germany Austria, Italy and the UK, the Alps are 2 hours one way and the Pyranees two hours the other, great mass transportation, best healthcare in the world, superb property laws, sailing, white water, sking, motor racing, bicyling, topless beaches, Formula 1, etc.

El Paso is a sheet-hole. No comparison. We have a 40-mile buffer of solid desert (plus the Border Patrol) between us and them.

And, they've been stocking Elephant Butte lately. Over the hill from me is the NMSU "fish farm in the desert" project. All you need is a flashlight, bolt-cutters and a net... :)

Affordability (in USD)?

The winters in the Northwest are mild, grey and rainy but not bad at all.

It's when the Fall and especially the Spring are a mild and rainy continuation of winter that you will miss California.

I made the same sort of decision as you are to leave California except I moved to find a better place to raise my kids and my top weather concern was no 100 degree days. Summers here are excellent.

Of course, like all places it depends.

In Provence, prices are higher because it is a well known area (Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez). In the Aude (right next door) the prices drop significantly. You can get a newly build house for $250K to $350K on the outskirts of many towns easily. If you want to be located in a city or town and want a renovated old house (1500 to 1900) it will start at $350K and go to $500K for a stunningly renovated mansion. Try: vefuk.com for a simple fast way to see price, type and location relationships.

What we did is bought a small apartment in Paris ($120K), our main residence in the Aude ($350K) and a two bedroom, two bath new build in the Aude for house swapping and rental income ($125K). It gives us a lot of flexibility and income in Euros (we also have USD income too).

As a former home owner in Grasse I have to say I think you are understating the prices in France by about 100%. Of course there are apples, and there are oranges, but $500K for a "stunningly renovated mansion"? There aren't many of those in France at that price.

And a newly built house for $250K? That would be postage stamp sized and certainly not in a desirable location.

We owned our house in France for 15 years and we will likely go back there eventually to retire—probably to Bordeaux. But our real problem was with the crime. We had a ridiculous number of break-in's, and given that we were there only a few months of the year this turned into an enormous headache for us. So much so that when an agent wrote us saying she had someone interested in the house, we sold it without a second thought. Of course if you lived there full time the crime would not be quite the issue—but still...

Other than the crime—I agree with you that France is pretty close to paradise.

120000 for a Paris apt? How large? Around 80-100 sq. feet at present prices.
France would be first on my list, other than the expensive real estate.

$120K will buy you a shoe-box in a suburb of Paris you really don't want to be in.

Or it will buy you a match-box in a nice part of town—though you may have to learn to sleep standing up.

Dont know. Here in NZ we only seem to let in people who can't speak English, no chance of a job, bring in about 15 family members in, usually Muslim, need a state (free) house, hate us, and make a living by stealing from us.

LOL, they usually stay long enough to get their citizenship then move to Sydney Australia as New Zealanders.