[btrautsc]

Bought a bungalow here on very lean startup salary. Mortgage significantly less than avg rent in SoMa/ Mountain View. Small yard for my dogs, great school if/when have kids. Less than 1 mile from a ton of restaurants, bars/taverns, whole foods.

Great life for a mid-20's person and still get to travel often.

[ardit33]

Don't want to diss you or anything, but as a European I find bungalows (usually in track row hosing) depressing. Also, less than a mile is not really close. To me close is something that is within a block, that I can just walk within 5 mins.

I live in NYC now, (east village), and there are about 100s of restaurant's, shops, bars, cafes just within 5 minutes walk. The diversity is ridiculous. (I don't think anywhere in the world you find so many kinds of nationalities and cousines in one place).

[btrautsc]

No diss taken, Sir. We may be thinking of the same type of house, perhaps not? But no matter.

I love NYC, and have visited 3x this year. It is an amazing place. I'd say that Chattanooga will not be comparable in almost any metric - # of X, density, variety.

I think for many living in American cities other than NYC, SF, downtown Chicago/ Boston/ DC/ ATL/ Seattle/ a few others - being able to live, walk, eat, get groceries is fairly unusual. Especially for a relative low cost with decent-to-high quality of housing.