Originally Posted by deflave
If you really want your neighbor 20 miles away your options in the lower 48 are pretty low.

And people usually find they don’t want to live THAT rural.



^^^ This ^^^

Pretty much any state bordering the Mississippi River and eastward you most likely would not find available real estate anywhere even close to being 20 miles to the nearest neighbor. Acreage in general and homes with small acreage has gotten ridiculously expensive, too. Even in areas with what are seemingly reasonable property tax rates, the increase in appraisal values have gotten so high you still wind up getting hammered hard. Homeowners insurance on rural property can get pretty expensive too due to either none or a formal fire department within a reasonable distance.

As to living "THAT rural", fact is, as we age, visits to doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, etc., typically get more and more frequent for most of us.

Watched my father and mother-in-law go through that. For years they lived in the church parsonage in a small town and planned on retiring on their semi-rural farm. As they got older though, and their medical care needs increased, they saw and accepted the 'writing on the wall'. They decided to continue to rent the farm house out and bought a little, easy to care for house with a small yard in a town of around 25k population with multiple doctors, pharmacies, a full service hospital, stores, and close enough to a larger town with 3 major hospitals, many, many more doctors, specialists, etc, that they could drive to in 15 - 20 minutes.