Vermont? Or possibly New Hamshire?

Anyone from the Vermont area?

My husband and I currently live in Portland OR, and we are looking to move to the New England area.

I guess we are just wondering what the housing market it like, jobs etc.

Any info would be great. Also, if we were to visit that area, what cities should we check out? I'm looking for a nice sized city, but definitely not quite as big as Portland. Somewhere safe, clean, and nice preferably.

I live in Nh right on the border of Nh and VT. My hubby grew up in Portland, OR and we just moved here a year ago from CA. It was a big move, but boy are we happy we did it. I would have to recommend the "Upper Valley" which includes Hanover, NH home of Dartmouth College. The job market is great; unemployment is around 1-2% (a huge switch from where we lived in CA at 12%). Housing is comparable too the Portland area. It is the apartments that are hard to find. They don't do big complexes like you'll find all over the west side. Mostly you will find apartments in two person homes. A nice, comfy apartment is at least $900 a month.

We live in Lebanon, near the green (the park the town was founded around) and we just love it. I cannot recommend it enough. It is a little quieter than Hanover, which is a typical college town with lots of coffee shops and such.

As far as weather, it obviously gets much colder here, but the winters are not as cloudy as in Portland. When it gets cold, it turns very dry and crystal blue. When it warms up the clouds come and that's when we get the snow. It does stay colder longer here, but I prefer it that way. You will find the fall colors are the same here...just more of them (I was in Portland two week ends ago visiting the ILs and the colors were great...and oh my goodness that thing they built up to OHSU was so strange to see!)

So there you go. If you have anymore questions, please feel free to respond or PM me.

Hey I live in Vermont and would give it a thumbs up.

Burlington Vermont is the major city, but is only 30K people or so. The surrounding towns push up the size of the metropolitan area to 60-80K.

The Burlington area has always receive high ratings from magazines that rate places to live.

The next largest towns in are under 20K.

Burlington is a little more expensive to live than the outlying areas. I myself live 35 miles north of Burlington and 10 miles south of the Quebec border in a small town of 2000K or so (outside of the St. Albans area).

But still housing is cheaper here than out west. In greater Burlington you can get a good house (2000 square foot or so) from 250K-300K. Up here in Franklin county it will be 200K-300K (the housing collapse has not hit here as drastically as in other areas).

There are some good churches in the Burlington area I would recommend to anyone. Of course mine in St. Albans I am also partial too.

The only thing that bothers me about the area is the politics is very liberal. Bernie Sanders is the formerly socialist mayor of Burlington. I read somewhere that Vermont was the most liberal state in the union and I believe it (at least in some areas). A while back a bunch of Vermont towns in their town meetings resolved that the president should be impeached. But none up here in Franklin county got involved in that foolishness. But maybe that wouldn't bother you (I'm on the conservative side of moderate myself).

I'm from Bend OR bur lived with my husband in Montana for about six years. One day he decided to move my family to VT and he managed to find a good job and a house relatively quickly. One of the things that he did that I would suggest is looking at the chamber of commerce for rental managers. That's how my hubby found our place. Did everything over the phone and internet.

I live in Springfield, VT and I do love this area. Pretty much dittoing what Tiredwalker said since that's fairly close to me.

I'm from North Springfield, VT but moving to the south soon.
I'm not a huge advocate of people moving to Vermont but most natives aren't. (j/k)

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Haha that's funny. Yeah I tell everyone to visit, but NOT move here!!

We're so close...I travel through N. Springfield every day to get to work in Proctorsville.

My mom wants to move south...she's said she wanted to for years...but she's just moving over the border to Charlestown now...go figure!