Moving From California To North Carolina - Know This FIRST!
Moving From California To North Carolina - Know This FIRST!
Are you from California and you're considering relocating to North Carolina? The Raleigh and Durham metro areas continues to be an attractive place for people to relocate due to a combination of its affordability, high quality of life, and job market. Our area continues to attract people in the research, technology, education, and health industries.
According to Money Magazine, it rated the Raleigh and Durham area Number three in best places to live in 2023 for over a decade, Raleigh and many surrounding suburbs have ranked in the top best places as well as safest places to live so much so that so many people are now moving to North Carolina and in the last decade, In the last nearly decade or so, a million people have moved here with 70 percent coming from other states and the top three states being Florida, New York, and you guessed it, California.
Now my family and I relocated here about five and a half years ago from Southern California and we actually moved here sight unseen in three weeks. Now, originally my husband grew up in the San Diego area, and prior to moving here, we lived right in between Los Angeles and Orange County. We wanted to find a state that had four seasons, but had mild winters, where the job market was strong, there was good schools, great colleges, and we were also looking for a slower pace of life, less traffic, affordable housing, and just overall a better quality of life.
And Raleigh, North Carolina seemed to check off all those boxes for us. So today I'll be exploring reasons why our family ultimately decided to move from California to North Carolina and why you may want to consider doing the same along with some cons we found. If you want to know more of that information, stay tuned because we're at it next.
Hey y'all, welcome to the channel or welcome back. I'm Brandy Nemergut, a local real estate agent right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Your connection to all things real estate and all things Raleigh. If this is your first time to the channel and you haven't subscribed yet, please click the button here and tap that little bell and you'll be notified every time we drop a new video.
Not only do I love helping y'all by making these videos, I also love to help you with your real estate needs. So feel free to reach out to me. My number and my email is on the screen there. Give me a call, shoot me a text, or send me an email. However you want to get a hold of me, I got your back when relocating to Raleigh, North Carolina.
Okay, we're going to jump right on and get started. The first thing I'm going to start with is location. Now in California we love the proximity to all the amenities that you can get to within one hour to a few hours and even do a lot of staycations in our backyard. So we love the location of Raleigh because Raleigh is approximately two to three hour drive both from the beaches and the mountains which are both our happy places.
along with being able to drive to a multiple amount of cities and states within a five hour drive. For example, since we've moved here, we've been able to drive and visit states like D. C., Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, Love, Charleston, and Savannah, Georgia, and all these are within a five hour window.
Now as a fun fact, More than half of the U. S. population lives within a day's drive from Raleigh because it's central location on the East Coast. Now another thing that attracted us to this area were the amenities. Now, if you don't want to go far, within the Raleigh and surrounding area, there's plenty of things to do.
We have the PNC Arena that not only does concerts throughout the year, you can also catch a hurricane game. Now they have um, WWE Smackdown is in town. If you love theater, we have Raleigh Theater. We also have the DPAC Center, which is the Durham Performing Arts Center. We've gone there and seen La Misera, we've seen Jersey Boys.
Frozen with our daughter. So there's a really big mix of things to do there There's also the cocoa booth amphitheater. We have museums. We have college sports We have hundreds of miles of greenway trails and parks We have a lot of great breweries and then year round in all of the cities and towns, there's always some kind of festival or fun going on.
I honestly feel like you can't get bored here. Now another factor for us was cost of living. Now relocating from Southern California, the cost factor was huge for us. You can actually go online to a cost calculator. I use best places. net and you type in the city that you currently live in and where you're considering relocating to.
And it'll actually pull up the price and show you how much are you going to save? Or is it more expensive? The town that you're considering relocating to. We moved here from Long Beach, California. Should we put Long Beach in? Type in a salary. It'll give you a quick comparison of prices for us. The overall cost of living was about 35 percent less expensive and housing was 42 percent less expensive.
So for us, it definitely made a lot of sense. Or should I say dollars? So a definite pro for us was housing, even though we bought a house five and a half years ago, fast forward, it's still less expensive to buy a house here overall than in California, where we came from. Now in mid 2023, the median single family residence house here is going to run you about 520, 000 in Raleigh.
Now, when you compare that to some of the popular suburbs around Raleigh, I'm thinking Cary, Apex. Holly Springs, those areas are gonna run you slightly higher. You'll be looking anywhere from about 610,000 to 775,000. And again, this is based on single family residences. Now, if you're looking for a town home, they're averaging around $340,000.
And in the other popular suburbs that I previously mentioned, you're for a town home, you're gonna roughly run around 420,000 to about 484,000 for a townhouse. Now, according to WRAL, Raleigh is the second largest growing metro area. So when you visit, you're going to see a lot of construction going on between our highways expanding, the completion project for I 540 to complete the outer loop to our country roads, and even all the new construction communities.
Now just as a side note, because I know a lot of people when they first relocate here, they start off in a rental, just like my family and I did. Now according to WRAL, Raleigh rent growth remains the highest in the nation. And according to Redfin, the median price rental is approximately 2, 119 a month.
And with rents this high, it has so many buyers still considering buying a starter home or even a townhome that's within a 45 minute to an hour drive of Raleigh, where you can still find homes within the low to mid 300. price point. The next thing that was important to us was quality of life. Now, according to Wallet Hub, Raleigh ranked number two for state capital for affordability and number 12 for quality of life and for best places to call home based on jobs, safety, educational opportunities, and more that make Raleigh appealing.
Next, we have best cities and safest cities to live. Now, year after year, Raleigh and a lot of the surrounding suburbs. are ranked as top places to live and top safest cities to live in. Next, we have jobs. Now we continue to attract some major players here in the banking, health, education and tech worlds.
We have our local colleges like Duke University and NC State. UNC Chapel Hill, the Wake County Public School Systems, IBM, SAS, Cisco, Lenovo, and Apple. And there's so many more businesses that are being attracted our way. A lot of these businesses are located in what's known as the RTP, which is the Research Triangle Park, where there's over 300 companies that employ approximately 65, 000 people on around a 7, 000 acre campus.
The next thing is schools. Now, according to niche. com, Wake County schools ranked number two in Raleigh, followed by Johnston County coming in at number four. In fact, Wake County school districts rank in the top 10 coming in the best school districts and athletics, as well as top. 20 for best teachers.
And there's so many school options from public schools to private schools to charter schools and even magnet schools. They range from traditional and year round calendars. You can check out great schools. org to find out more about a particular school. And I also have a video that tells you more about the schools within the Wake County system that you can check out as well.
Next we have colleges. Now there's definitely not a shortage of great colleges here in North Carolina. We have NC State, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University, Meredith, ECU, Wake Tech, Shaw University, just to name a few. Now another fun fact, Raleigh is in the top 10 most educated cities in the U. S. So if education is important to you and your family, Raleigh is definitely a great place to consider.
Now when it comes to daycare, this is something that you definitely want to be prepared for when you come out here. Now in California, we did not have any issues finding daycare, but when we came out here, it seemed like so many people had a waiting list. And again, depending where you live and you're coming from, the cost may be more or less expensive.
For us It ran us, for infants, it's about 265 a week, and for toddlers it's about 215 a week. Now, again, that's just our experience and some of our clients. So if you are needing daycare, make sure you see if there's a waiting list before you come. Now, when it comes to groceries, I feel like overall groceries are less expensive, but when it does come to produce, the produce does not seem as expensive.
fresh as it did in California. It just doesn't last as long. And if you're like me, I used to eat avocados every day in California. I used to be able to get them super cheap, like a dollar or less. Well, here they're running about 2. 50 on average. So quite a bit more expensive. And we do have some really great grocery stores for you to choose from anywhere from Aldi to Lidl.
We have Publix, Costco, Wegmans, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods. So we definitely have a lot of options when it comes to that. And I will say I prefer going to farmer's markets when it comes to my fresh produce for vegetables and fruits. I just feel like it lasts a lot longer than the grocery store. Now when it comes to utilities, Personally, we feel like we're paying more for electric and gas.
And part of the reason is again, in California, we basically had one season to one and a half seasons. We lived in a coastal area. So we were able to open up our windows and let the coastal breeze come in. And so we had a lot less expense there. Now here you have four seasons. There's a running joke that you could actually get four seasons in the same week and sometimes even the same day.
So between the hot summers, it's going to affect your electricity bill. And then depending if you are connected to Um city gas or if you have a propane tank on your property That's going to be another factor involved as well because your propane is going to fluctuate depending on gas prices So just something to be aware of since we have four seasons You're going to be using your air conditioner and you're heating a lot more than you possibly do currently Now I will say when it comes to gasoline prices.
It's definitely less expensive here. I would say on average You Even from the time we moved five and a half years ago till now, we usually average about a dollar to a dollar fifty less expensive than California, which is really nice. Right now, we're in the low to mid three dollars a gallon, for example, and we're in mid 2023.
Now when it comes to taxes, the combined sales tax rate is 7. 25 percent in Raleigh. The state tax rate is going to be 5. 25 percent and the sales tax rate is going to be 4. 75%. Now depending on which county you decide to purchase a home in, for example, we're currently in Wake County. Looking at this chart here, you can see property taxes are going to be roughly 0.
62%, which is lower than a lot of our surrounding counties. And you just also want to take into consideration if you move to the city and you're within city limits. You may have to pay an additional tax for city versus being on the outer city limit So something definitely to look in when you're purchasing a home now jumping to some of the cons First off we're going to have traffic now Traffic is not like it is in California where you're sitting on the freeway for an hour and you're really not moving very far You're just inching away through rush hour traffic.
It's not like that at all But I will say in the five and a half years, we've lived here. It definitely has become more congested But again, I would say that's to be expected With the amount of new construction going on here the amount of influx of people moving to north Carolina It's going to be expected but in saying that It's still nothing in comparison to California.
Now, I will say one thing that not only surprised us, but surprises a lot of our clients that relocate here is the fact that we really don't have a great public transportation system here. And it's really not walkable like a lot of Metro areas. So if you move here, you definitely want to make sure you have your transportation figured out and you have a car.
I mean, we do have Uber and Lyft. So if you don't have a car, there are other ways to get around. Now, one thing that would be considered a con for a lot of the younger generation is going to be the lack of nightlife. Now, for us, we didn't mind because we're more family. We do a lot of kid things, outdoors, parks.
So we're not really out and about during nighttime. But if the nightlife is important to you, I would say out of the surrounding areas, Durham and Raleigh are going to have the most. opportunity for you to find anything because all the other surrounding towns and suburbs are pretty sleepy and closed down early at night.
So if you're coming from like the LA or the Hollywood area where you're clubbing, you're doing salsa dancing, you know, you're going bar hopping and staying out to the wee hours of the morning, that does not exist here. A lot of times you're hard pressed to find a restaurant that stays open past nine on the weekdays and on the weekends, 10 o'clock, you're excited.
There's a handful that will be 11 or 12 o'clock, but I feel like that's even been in the most recent years. So again, depending on your family and your lifestyle, that could be a pro or a con. Next, let's talk about the weather. Now, that's one thing that I did want was four seasons, and for the most part, we do get those.
Now, my favorite seasons are going to be spring and fall, and the only caveat to that is the pollen during springtime. We do have about a three week window where there's this yellowish film all over everything, and your allergies are going absolutely crazy. So, if you don't need to take allergy medicine yet, you may need to when you get here.
Summers, instead of the dry heat that we have in California, it's super humid here. So that takes a little bit of time to get used to, but again, we do have air conditioning. So as you live here, it took us about two years to really acclimate. And now we're used to doing outdoor activities and it's not that big of a deal for us.
Now fall is absolutely gorgeous. We love how the trees are changing colors. Everything's just absolutely beautiful. And then the winters. We've actually only had snow two out of the five years and snow is really not that bad as quick as it comes it goes. It's usually, you know, a 24 to 48 hour window that you have snow and then you're out and about again.
We do get a lot of rain though. I know on average California ranges about 11 inches of rain. Here we get an average about 47 inches. And again, that's why it's so green and beautiful. But I love that, you know, you have the window for each and every season. And if you start getting tired of one season before you know it, we're into the next.
Now let's talk about another con which are the bugs and the wildlife. Now all the things you've probably heard are true. Yes, we have big bugs. Yes, we have snakes. You want to watch out for the copperheads. We do have ticks. We have flying cockroaches. We have mosquitoes and more, but in saying that, depending where you live, personally, I have a jungle behind my house.
I'm on a three acre property backing up to an 86 acre farm. So yes, I'm going to have more bugs than a lot of people. Um, but if you're in a community that has less trees and water than I do, you're probably not going to have as many issues with the bugs as I do. But in saying that I know no matter where you live, you're going to have something growing up in the high desert.
We had to pay attention for rattlesnakes. And what was the other thing? And scorpions. So you kind of got to pick your poison. No matter where you move, there will be something. And we went over a lot of reasons why we relocated from California to North Carolina. And some reasons why you and your family may consider or not consider relocating.
Moving here as well. I really hope you found this information helpful If you did, please click the like button So others like you can find this information as well And if you're considering moving to the Raleigh area or anywhere surrounding the Raleigh area Feel free to give me a call shoot me a text or send me an email.
Brandy Nemergut, Realtor ~ eXp Realty Raleigh, NC
919-583-6895
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