The best place to live if you work in Boston is New Hampshire?
HSH.com, a mortgage and consumer loan site, published a study about where the best places were to live outside of a big city.
Ever thought of living in New Hampshire and commuting to Boston for work? Apparently it wouldn’t be so bad.
HSH.com, a mortgage and consumer loan site, published a study called, “Live here, work there: Best places to live outside the big city,’’ and found that New Hampshire was the best place to live if you are working in Boston and wanted to live outside of the city center.
“We looked at income tax, consumption tax (sale and gas), general cost of living, and real estate costs (average cost of home and mortgage rate),’’ Richard Barrington, a researcher at HSH told Boston.com. “We also looked at very basic quality of life factors: crime rate and education scores.’’
They then computed a percentage that compared the metric to the center city and averaged the percent differences.
“It’s an average across those categories about how much better or worse the outlying area is compared to center city,’’ Barrington said.
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HSH.com found that New Hampshire was 33.62 percent better than living in Boston, Rhode Island was 14.25 percent better, and suburban Massachusetts was 9.64 percent better.
According to HSH: “The big potential win here is a move to New Hampshire, which has no income tax on wages, sharply lower home prices, and considerably less crime.’’ But they noted that Massachusetts does perform better in standardized test scores.
“I think people know Boston is an expensive place to live,’’ Barrington said. “Everyone has their own preferences. We tried to focus on more objective and measureable factors so they can weigh personal preferences with numbers.’’
Though the living might be better, definitely check out what your commute would be like before you pick up and move to the Granite State.
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