You can get nice house for $300,000, just not in a major metro zone. It works if your "stop-the-rate-race" mentality includes moving to a rural area. Especially if you leave CA or NY.
You definitely don't even have to leave NY State, just the city and its environs. Rural Upstate NY has more in common with rural PA than it does with, say, Westchester or the Hamptons. Or even with most of MA.