I have tried to push this point across to people for years. Just because housing and other expenses are cheap in an area, doesn't make it great. Years ago, I ended up in an area that is still depressed and will be for the rest of my life most likely. I moved there in the mid-90's and it was "doing ok". It was primarily a textile town, with a couple of steel joist plants, a national commercial playground equipment manufacturer, a pedestrian/golf cart bridge manufacturer, a large bakery and a few other decent niche industrial employers. About 7-8 years later, the textiles moved away almost overnight after the passage of CAFTA, the bakery was purchased by another large bread company, it was union, there was a 90-120 long, nasty strike right at that time and when the strike was over, 800+ people were unemployed. The new owners shut that plant down. It was the largest single employer in the county, a large consumer of natural gas and electricity. The textile manufacturers greatly subsidized the area residents' electricity and water.
All of the sudden, more than 8000 people in a county of 50k were unemployed. Back then, the figures were that one job supported 3.x people. This was a couple years before 2006-2008 housing crash. By 2006 in this area, you couldn't give a home away. My income had zero to do with any of these industries. My employer worked for companies outside this area. I took another job in 2006, wanted to sell my house and received zero offers in a 12 month period from 2006-2007. I think it was shown 2 times. We hung on to it for another 7 years, traveling to it and using it on most weekends. We sold it for less than $50/sf in 2014. We wrote a $3k check at the closing table to get rid of it.
