S/O of sorts - North Carolina. What do you know?

I have several friends who live in NC and have visited and vacationed there several times. It's a big state with many differences in terrain and in neighborhoods, so it's impossible to generalize. We love the Outer Banks and the people we have met there. Asheville is an artsy town and a fun place to live near. A friend who lives in the mountains finds it to be much too rural, with not enough access to stores and potential friends, and many (he says) who are only church-based in their social lives. That can be good or bad, depending on your lifestyle.

Be sure to choose an area with medical facilities nearby. Some areas are outstanding in this regard, and others are very lacking.

Good point - the Triangle has Duke, UNC & Wake Med all within 30 minutes of each other.

I also love that the airport is close & convenient.

We lived in Charlotte for 30 years. It was not my choice to go there, but that's where the job was so it took awhile to grow on us. It's a great place to raise kids and there are many employment opportunities because of all the banks and large companies that came because the banks were there. It has changed a whole lot since we went there. Lots of great restaurants because of Johnson and Wales. It has arts and culture, professional sports and relatively warm winters. A lot of northerners have come down and absolutely love it. You can buy a nice home very reasonably and exercise outdoors almost year round.

The medical facilities are great. There are two good hospital systems, Carolinas Medical Center and Presbyterian.

Traffic is bad at rush hour and their planning is not great. I-485 was inadequate the day it opened so it's been under construction. Charlotte grew very quickly and the city planners didn't keep up. When we got there, it was a wide place in the road that thought they were a "world class city". They actually called it that. Now, they realize they're not world class just because they have a basketball team, but they're starting to live up to their opinion of themselves.

I live in Florida now and although I like it very much, I see the benefit of living somewhere with so many corporate headquarters. Here in Florida, you either bring money with you or live hand to mouth. Charlotte is a prosperous city which means everyone benefits.

I live in Asheville so I am completely biased.

It is small and you would have to be okay with that.

I like that we are 2 hours from Charlotte.. for theatre.. more shopping. We are also an hour or so from Greenville SC which also has theatre and shopping.

We are 4 hours from the beaches of SC. Charleston area.

That said I almost wish we had looked at Winston-Salem Greensboro area's because they offer more in the way of jobs and education for my daughter.

I choose not to live in Charlotte because I couldn't stand the traffic and to me, it seemed like a big city without a lot of uniqueness. Just one big suburb. I have spent more time there the last few years and it does have an interesting downtown, but not the most interesting.

That is true of most of the state the exceptions being some area's of Raleigh, most of Charlotte, Asheville, and Boone (where Appalachian State is located)

I live outside Winston-Salem, lived here all my life, and would not live anywhere else. Love the weather, humidity and all. We live 4 hours or less from the beaches, close to Raleigh, Charlotte, the mountains. Just about anywhere I could want to go, I can get there easily.

I've lived here all my life. Our schools are actually being underutilized. One reason is the number of retirees moving into the area versus families. Four couples have moved into our neighborhood in recent years in an area that used to be almost exclusively inhabited by 2 families. I'm in the foothills, 1 1/2 hours NW of Charlotte, 2 hours east of Asheville. It's very pretty here and the cost of living is low. Our power bill last month was $70 something which is unusually low for summer but about average for spring and fall and we use electricity for everything, no gas. You really don't have to worry much about natural disasters, the closest river is dam controlled, we are too far from the ocean to seriously worry about hurricanes and the mountains mostly protect us from tornadoes. There were forest fires in the area last year but that's pretty rare.

The downside is that if you don't have children and you aren't religious, your social life can be pretty limited. Dh and I belong to a couple of groups - a book club and an outdoor club. We have to drive 30 minutes from our small town to pretty much anything. There are a few decent local restaurants but the chains dominate. We use the local hospitals but for serious stuff we make the drive to Winston-Salem. There are plenty of top notch hospitals in NC.

From western NC, you are far closer to the SC beaches than NC. The outer banks is probably 8 hours from me and despite living here all my 50+ years I've never been there. I just go to SC beaches and there are plenty of pretty ones with varying amounts of tourist stuff to ones that are more remote. Personally we prefer Hilton Head Island. Going west to Asheville there is plenty to do. We looked into Asheville to retire to one day but found the cost of housing and the high crime rate put us off. Charlotte is notorious here for the awful traffic. I've never known this for sure but I'd bet they were the last city of its size in the country to get a interstate loop around it. Plus every street is named and a street will just change names half way through town so you just have to know where you are going. I'm very familiar with Charlotte so it doesn't bother me as much. And then there is the crime. So I think most people who move to Charlotte do so for work rather than choosing it as a city first and then finding a job there.

NC is really varied in both what is available to do and the costs so you would want to spend some time in the state after prioritizing what was important to you.

I live in the Triad of NC (Greensboro, High Point, Winston Salem) and love it. However, I am from Wilmington, NC and that will always be home to me. From my perspective, the Triad is a great place to live. We are in the middle of the state. It take 2.5 hours to get to the mountains and 3.5 hours to get to the beaches near Wilmington. We have lots of Colleges and Universities in the area, and some of the best healthcare in the nation is nearby. Also, we are only about 1.5 hours from Charlotte. There is a lot to do here. I work in downtown Greensboro and don't think Greensboro itself is as Republican as some might think. The surrounding area...probably so. Hope this helps!

This is GREAT information! I'm from NY (LI) and DH is from NJ. We moved to FL 6 years ago and I immediately hated it, but gave it a whirl for him. This was his dream to retire down here. I can't take the humidity and just about everything else here. It's too much of a culture shock. The most important thing is that my surgeon (a specific field) operated on me and moved to Duke so I thought we'd move up to NC (baby steps towards moving back to NY). I love the idea of 4 real seasons and I'm hoping to find a Democratic area/liberal thinking area with decent medical care. Traffic doesn't bother me. I worry about the layout of roads/highways. I hate parkways and loop-de-loop roads (like SC has). I have vision issues and can't handle roads like that......

NC sounds great (near Duke--maybe Garner or Raleigh?). It'll be our next move. Good luck anniel, when you do move!

Ditto what lisae said about NC beaches. We have driven to Hilton Head for 27+ years. It's a 5 1/2 hour drive instead of 8 or so to get to a NC beach even though I live in NC.

You might want to look at Asheville. It is much cooler than the Raleigh area. A lot less humidity. Thank you mountains! 

Also has excellent health facilities.  I think it gets overlooked because of Duke, but Mission is excellent. 

The politics in Asheville are very liberal.  I know someone said Asheville is expensive, and right in Asheville it is. But if you go outside of town it can be quite affordable, Black Mountain, Hendersonville & Brevard are all gorgeous towns with a lot to offer, close to Asheville and more affordable. 

We get a lot of people retiring here who went to Florida and found it too hot and came half-way back to the Northeast.  

I have no idea where you get some of these pronouncements you make. I've lived my entire life in the south in five different states never experiencing bugs as an issue.

We have friends in northwestern NC and they have a lot of mosquitoes. They're not big but they bite big.

I was astonished by the cockroaches in Louisiana when I spent a summer there, I stayed just outside of New Orleans and some of the roaches we saw were huge and you couldn't squash them with a broom. When I hear about bigs that could snatch a toddler I think of those roaches, just terrible!

We moved here from western MA. After our first winter, we knew we were staying.