When Dr. Kenneth Genova told his colleagues at New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital two years ago he was moving to rural Georgia, they thought he was crazy. But the 33-year-old psychiatrist says one of the sanest things he ever did was move to LaGrange, Ga., a city of 25,000 about 70 miles south of Atlanta.
White-collar urbanites have long accepted pay cuts in exchange for the lower costs of small-town life. Tradeoffs included the loss of the virtual 24-hour access to almost everything, as well as the cornucopia of dining and entertainment options.
But the rise of self-employment in such “portable” fields as consulting, telecommunications and software has led to much greater freedom in choosing where to live and has enhanced the attraction of towns far off the beaten career track. Successful young professionals are finding they can have their white-picket fences and keep big-city paychecks.
“I thought it would be possible to make the same money, but it was a great surprise and pleasure to make more,” Genova says. “My net income is double of what it would have been in New York.”
And that pay envelope goes a long way in towns where real estate prices and taxes tend to be significantly lower. In Genova’s case, the same $200,000 or so he paid for a tiny New York condominium, bought a 4,500-square-foot house on a wooded acre with lake access.
Typical of LaGrange’s housing is a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom, 1,630-square-foot house on 1.5 acres with an asking price of $96,800 and taxes of $900, according to local broker Peggy Wiles of Coldwell Banker/Manor Real Estate.
Larger houses include a 4-bedroom, 3.5 bathroom, 2,750 brick house on a three-quarter-acre lot with an asking price of $164,000 and taxes of $1,688. Among the higher-end options, a 4-bedroom, 3.5 bathroom, 3,500-square-foot house on 1.3 acres can be had for $205,000, with taxes of $2,100.
“The savings is in the housing and the taxes,” says Norman Crampton, author of “The 100 Best Small Towns in America,” who himself moved from Chicago to Greencastle, Ind. (population: 10,000), five years ago. “People are looking for nicer environments to do their work, not a change in the work, just a nice change, and if you can keep your salary that’s terrific.”
Crampton says he sold his house in the suburbs for $160,000 and bought one twice as large for about $80,000. At the same time, he saw his annual real estate taxes drop to $650 from $3,600.
Both job growth and per capita income for small towns and rural areas have been growing at a faster clip than in metropolitan areas, according to government statistics. Demographers have even spotted a “modest” increase in the number of college-educated immigrants to rural areas.
Employment in non-metropolitan areas grew 5.8 percent in the first four years of the decade, compared with a rate of 2.5 percent in metropolitan areas in the same period, says Calvin Beale, a senior demographer with the Agriculture Department.
Per capita income in non-metro regions grew at a rate of 12.9 percent for the years 1990 through 1993, compared with 11.1 percent in metro areas. (There is still a sizable gap: urban centers average $21,994 a year vs. $16,111 in the sticks.)
For Alan Morrow, a chemical engineer, moving to a small town in Washington from San Francisco didn’t even mean giving up the security of working for an established company.
Morrow, 35, left the cozy confines of Chevron Corp. to take a job with Veco Engineering in Bellingham, Wash., a town of 50,000 closer to Vancouver, British Columbia, than Seattle, 100 miles south.
“The cost of housing here for the equivalent schools and neighborhood is probably half (of San Francisco),” he says.
The twin benefits of high incomes and low costs are becoming increasing available to the growing ranks of “teleworkers,” those working anytime and place via telephones and computers. The Center for the New West, an economic think tank, estimates there are over 10 million such workers today, up from about 2 million in 1988.
Jon Sargent, an economist with the Office of Employment Projections, U.S. Department of Labor, says there are no hard data on white-collar migration, but agrees that the rise of telecommunications technology is changing where and how young professionals live.
“Many areas of business, and even the government, are in a process of trying to digest the whole communications revolution. . . that opens a lot of possibilities,” says Mr. Sargent, noting that civil servants are a group that could benefit from the trend. “There may be more people who are able to live in small communities whose work headquarters may be hundreds of miles away.”
The trend toward telecommuting is allowing David Lively, a 29-year-old software writer, to consider a move to a 55-acre property he has been eyeing in the woods of Vermont while keeping his job in suburban Boston.
“My wife and I are seeing for the money we can get a much nicer place,” he said. “We’re trying to slash more than 60 percent off housing costs.”
Lively, who already spends at least two days a week working at home, said he finds that he’s more productive out of the office, when he’s freer to work on his own schedule. It also allows a bit of financial freedom as well.
“One of the great things is not being forced to live in an area where housing costs are high,” he said.
John Dunkle, a 38-year-old marketing consultant, traded in his house in suburban New Jersey for the rustic life of the New Hampshire coast seven years ago.
Dunkle said he was able to maintain his New York salary, and now lives a stone’s throw away from the Atlantic Ocean at “substantially lower” costs.
“It’s just amazing,” he said. “It’s like 60 cents on the dollar in New York.”
For some, the public sector can be the ticket to small-town life. For Christopher Barnes, 35, a job offer as town engineer was enough to draw his young family from a two-bedroom house in the Chicago suburbs to Greencastle, which is about 40 miles west of Indianapolis. He got a $10,000 raise, and housing costs were low enough that his wife could afford to stay home with their child.
“For us personally, friends and neighbors were the community,” he says. “People born in the suburbs or the city were just stunned at what we were doing.”
Crampton says while small towns aren’t immune to crime, there isn’t the same sense of randomness that exists in some cities. And small towns, he adds, often offer young professionals the chance to play an active role in civic affairs and the opportunity to quickly become a “leading citizen.
“In New York, you go to your job and then you leave it,” says Dr. Genova. “In a small town, you’re a member of community.”
