I've lived in Virginia within a 45 minute drive to DC...would NEVER EVER live there again!
Desoto County, MS is #52...but I sure wouldn't consider it for rural living. Desoto County is filling up with subdivisions and the cost of real estate is high (which is why we live in Tate County...just south of Desoto County).
I live in the next county over from #3 McPherson County, Kansas.
My daughter and family live there. If I stumble across a job there which suits me, I'll make the move there myself.
McPherson, itself, has a refinery which is being added onto. Abbott Labs has facilities there, as does Johns Mansville and a company that makes pex tubing.
The super Walmart there is the largest in Kansas at the current time. Each that they build seems to be a bit larger than the last.
The county has two christian based colleges, and with many of the Mennonite faith in the county it has some pretty good values.
Oh yeah, the little town of Marquette that has been in the news for GIVING LAND AWAY is in the county. But of course the sentiment on these forums has been that this had to be a hell hole and not a decent place to live.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the sentiment of the board seems much different than that of "Progressive Farmer" magazine.
I would love to have a house on Coronado Heights, or convert the WPA castle.
I looked very hard at some property about a 1½ miles west of there on the same road. I want a south facing house and the property would have almost demanded a north facing one because of the road. Glad I passed as my kids moved from Lindsborg to Galva.
I especially like the way the community takes care of those in the nursing home.
Marquette is kind a neat quaint town, but not somewhere I would want to live. To the highway north of Marquette more toward Lindsborg are some hills that would be wonderful to build a home on in order to see the surrounding countryside and valley if you wish to call it that. Kind of like Coronado Heights, I think you can see seven communities from up top.
I find it mildly humorous that the #1 best rural county to live in (Fauquier County, Virginia) is 45 minutes away from the #2 fastest growing regional economy in the country.
I would have liked to have seen the list before they began to heavily edit it for subjective preference. I also think it's a bad idea to take state and county property tax into consideration without also taking in the totality of the tax burden on residents because, in general, a state with a high property tax has lower taxes in other areas. Take Virginia and Vermont for example. Vermont's property tax is 3x higher than Virginia, however, in Vermont there is absolutely no personal property tax while in Virginia you pay a tax on the ORIGINAL book value of your car every year, even when it is years old. Furthermore, in Virginia, you have a 3 or 4% (!) grocery tax where in Vermont there is no grocery tax at all. And, while Vermont's tax burden may be slightly higher than or states, how many other states provide such comprehensive health insurance to lower income children?
Better to keep taxes out of it entirely, because everyone's total taxes paid when all is said and done is pretty minimal. The difference between the highest and lowest state/local tax burden is only 2-3%. By contrast, the difference between the highest and lowest real estate cost, crime rate and so on is HUGE! Disregard taxes and then we can get a better sense of where those diamonds in the rough are.
Sean.
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