Detroit has some great suburbs (check out areas like Ferndale and Plymouth/Canton), but don’t write off Detroit based on what you’ve read in the media. A lot of people in Michigan are in the same boat as you and are missing out on what Detroit has to offer because of what they think Detroit is.

It’s really flat here compared to California, you can’t just drive a couple hours to get what you call hills and we call mountains. The Great Lakes are great but they’re not an ocean.

Flights from DTW are more expensive than from big cities. It’s funny that Detroit is 2,000 miles closer to Europe than SFO, but flights to Europe from SFO are cheaper.

We started getting wildfire smoke from Canada this year, but I imagine we’re still doing better than SoCal.

California is still more progressive than Michigan, but we also don’t have as much craziness around ballot initiatives.

I adore Detroit, but it’s no LA or SF. Chicago is about 4 hours away.

A lot of people in Michigan are expecting the state population to boom in the coming decades. No earthquakes or hurricanes, minimal wildfires and tornadoes. Lots of access to fresh water.

We passed a ballot initiative in 2018 that made an independent committee draw up congressional districts and wouldn’t you know it, the state suddenly went blue when no one could gerrymander anymore! Legal recreational weed, legal abortion, free school lunches, the progressives are moving fast with the new majority.

What area all depends on how much winter you can take. Detroit-Ann Arbor area is probably the mildest, followed by Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo (great cities, lake effect snow storms), Up North (even worse snow) and da UP (Marquette is amazing but if you don’t like snow sports you’ll go insane).

$500k will but you a great house in some suburbs or a decent house in a hot market.

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