My husband and I have recently been thinking of looking a little futher than our immediate neighborhood when it comes to purchasing a house. We talked about moving as far south as San Diego, but when we visited the city this summer, we didn’t quite feel the vibe. That’s important to us, the right vibe. Of course, it also has to be a city that we can afford to live in, with some decent stores and shops, perhaps some interesting history, a coffee shop or local Starbucks that I can walk or ride my bike to, and hopefully has a school district that is hiring.

A great place I’ve always liked to visit, to get a city by city comparison, is BestPlaces.net. It lets you look at the overall cost of living of a city, then narrows it down based on climate, housing costs, education, crime, and all the nitty-gritty statistics that are important to know about a city.  I especially like the comments left by people who actually live in the city (not all cities have personal comments, but this feature is helpful.) If I can’t visit the city myself, these personal views help mold my initial impression of the city, for better or worse.

This weekend, while I was recuperating from a bad cough (no thanks to my sweet little student’s runny noses!), I decided to check out Zillow and browse the whole state of California’s map for home sales. I pushed my mouse further north towards the bay area and Davis, California. I have read a few inspiring bicycle stories about Davis, like the fact that they are considered a platinum bicycle city according to the American Bicycle League. They are well-known for their terrific bike infrastructure. However, according to , Zillow, their housing market is still a little out of our price range.

So, I pushed my mouse slightly further, to a town right outside of Davis called Woodland. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to find some photos of the city and even a local newspaper. It seems awfully quaint, filled with a historic looking downtown and many victorian-style houses, though small in size for our standards. But I guess many cities will seem small compared to a metropolis of over 3.5 million people! I then remembered I had a friend who went to school in Davis, and with the help of Facebook (I’d be a complete recluse without the Internet!), I was able to enlist a more personal opinion of this unknown area. According to her description, Woodland has some great Mexican food and Davis has terrific bike lanes. She also added that Davis had a good mix of a farmy/hippy thing going on. I think my husband and I need to plan a visit soon.

Here are the BestPlaces.net overall cost of living comparison. You’ll notice that Woodland is more cost-effective if we were looking to save money, where Davis is about the same as Los Angeles when you average it out.

Davis and Los Angeles City Comparison

Woodland and Los Angeles City Comparison

Of course, if we decided we didn’t want to move 400 miles north of where we currently live, but needed to reduce our cost of living, especially our housing costs, we could always move 15 miles north to the Santa Clarita Valley. There are quite a few cities within in the neighboring valley, so this overview is kind of vague. The biggest drawback with this particular community is the slightly higher temperature in the summer. (I originally was going to say it’s walkscore, but after searching a couple of decent properties, it’s average walkscore is about 60 – not bad!)

Santa Clarita and Los Angeles City Comparison

As we near the beginning of 2010, I’ll be able to have a clearer focus on exactly what houses will be within our realm of possibility. Until then, I can dream of distant utopias!