Warning: I nerd it up a bit in this one.

In part 1 of the story, I filled in a lot of the background on the major influencing factors on what is the 22nd move I’ve made. The next major hurdle was looking for a place to go.

On Monday the week I got laid off, Sara and I had the infamous discussion that led us to the conclusion that it was time to buy a house. We went back and forth for a bit but finally settled on the idea that we’d offer to buy our rental from our landlords. This house, while not spectacular, had one major advantage over every single house in the United States; all our stuff was here.

By Friday the week I got laid off we both agreed fuck that idea. Work was now over 100 miles away, and it made zero sense to buy a house in a town where we had no friends or family. It was time to start searching, and if I was going to work remotely, why not own it, let’s look everywhere.

So in the dead of the 2017/2018 winter, with a foot of snow on the ground, I did what I do best, and built a database.

I started by grabbing data from the National Association of Realtors that had the median home price broken down by county. We came up with a theory that we were looking for any county in the United States where the median home price was 75% of our top line dollar. The idea here was that any house we were going to put an offer in on would be one of the nicer homes in the area.

Next, I found some data on high school graduation rates per school district and was able to line that data up with my home price data. The second criteria, a high-school graduation rate above 90%.

Fun facts: There isn’t a single county in California or Hawaii that fit my thresholds.

We spent the winter staring at the snow out our window and seeing all the counties in warmer climates we wondered if it was time to leave Michigan.

Winter came and went and one final life change stepped in to seal us here in the Wolverine state for good.

In the summer of 2018, I moved to a new team and with it, my roles and responsibilities changed. By late fall of last year, it was clear that being a commutable distance from work was going to be more beneficial in the long run. Sara’s dreams of moving back to North Carolina fell off the vision board, but we wondered; if we were willing to put an offer in on a place in the dead of a Michigan January, would we be able to maybe just maybe not get stuck back in the suburbs we had left three years ago.

(to be continued)