Good to hear! Just a heads up for you and your wife, anything next to the coast is priced outrageously, but if you look even half an hour drive inland, the prices drop quickly.
If you and your wife like nature, there are several reasonably priced places in Anza-Borrego. It’s a tiny town out in the desert, in the middle of a state park. I saw a place out there a few months ago for only $58,000
Yeah, we’re looking at suburbs of Seattle and it’s not nearly as bad as we’d expected. Like without a job we’re going to be in a studio or something but it’s not nearly the financially devastating choice we’d worried. Otherwise we’d’ve probably looked at something like Annapolis or Minneapolis where it’s fine, but probably not much worse than Ohio cities.
The biggest things for us were being in a blue part of a blue state on the border with good job prospects for our careers