I returned a day early from my vacation in Michigan to stay at my parent’s house in Shaker Heights, Ohio. During the downtime, my wife and I took a quick look at houses in the area. While we know it will be at least a few years off before we save enough for a down payment, we were curious what houses outside of the Boston area cost.

First, a quick overview of Shaker Heights, Ohio. A few years ago it was ranked the eighth wealthiest zip code in the nation. It has a well renowned school district, known for its extremely high college admittance rate (percentage of students who graduate and continue on to college), as well as its great success with integration (nearly half the student body is African-American). It has a very low crime rate, and is twenty five minutes from Cleveland’s city center (including an option for mass transit). It also sports a large number of parks and a handful of mile-long lakes.

In other words, it’s a really great place to live. So let’s take a look at a house that my wife and I visited this past Sunday.

It has four bedrooms, three full baths, and one half bath, with a total of 9 rooms. It has a 0.5 acre lot with a circular drive, a two car garage, and central air. It has a sprawling upstairs and refurbished basement. We loved it. The house is $240,000 for 3000 square feet, or $80/square foot.

The closest comparison to a suburb where we live, north of Boston, is Danvers, Massachusetts. It also has a solid school district and low crime. The town has some really beautiful places to live, though it is somewhat more of a mixed bag in that respect than Shaker Heights. It is also closer to an hour commute to Boston.

Here is the closest priced home we could find in Danvers, Massachussets:

It has three bedrooms, one bathroom, with a total of 6 rooms. It has a 0.25 acre lot with no garage and no central air. The house is $300,000 for 1300 square feet, or $230/square foot.

These two examples are not extremes; in fact, they pretty much represent the averages of not only these two communities, but of living outside Cleveland compared to living outside Boston. A house near Boston is literally three times as expensive as a house near Cleveland.

To be fair, I should mention that real estate taxes are cheaper on a house outside Boston. The Shaker Heights house has about $8000/year in taxes, while the Boston house has about $5000/year in taxes. This example is slightly skewed in that Shaker Heights has one of the highest school tax rates in the country (neighboring communities, which are similar to Shaker, has much more reasonable tax rates).

So, you can live in one of the top ten richest areas of the country, Shaker Heights, for one-third the cost of living in a median income town near Boston. This is not even including other items which effect the cost of living. According to BestPlaces.net, living outside Cleveland, OH is 36% cheaper than living outside Boston, MA.

The question remains: Why live in Boston compared to Cleveland? This is cue for most people to smirk and chuckle and say “But it’s CLEVELAND!”

If there is one thing I have discovered in living in four different cities and three different states over the past few years, it is that nearly every suburb in America is the same as the next. Turn the corner and you will find a Best Buy. Drive in the city and you will find an array of museums, shows, and sports games. Pack your clubs in the car and find a golf course within a few miles.

If that really is the case, then you are left with three major reasons: Because of the people, the jobs, and the specific place you live. We currently live near Boston because my wife’s family and friends are here, and that we made roots here during college. I have a great job that I enjoy going to every day. Lastly, we rent, so while we feel the sting of higher housing costs, it’s closer to double (instead of triple) what we would be paying monthly in Ohio, and we’re also free to leave any time we wish.

I have to admit that as I start to think more about raising a family, and realizing how higher a standard of living I could have paying saving 2/3rds on my mortgage costs, places like Cleveland (or anywhere besides the San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Hawaii) begin to look very appealing.

I will leave you with what I found to be an absolutely hilarious example of how ridiculous real estate is priced in this area:

A one bedroom, one bath, 480 square foot house for $189,000, or nearly $400/square foot.