I constantly think about this. Well, maybe not constantly but very frequently. I live in a "nice" neighborhood - not the best in my city but pretty good. I bought my place pre-MMM so I definitely paid more for the location, and I was thinking I might have kids one day so I looked for a good school too. It is fairly walkable and bikeable. My boyfriend lives in a nearby blue collar neighborhood where house prices are much lower. And taxes are lower. And homeowners insurance rates are lower. Even the water bill is lower due to reasons. And when I looked up our city's crime statistics, expecting to show him that my neighborhood is the better one for us to settle in, I was surprised that his has a lower crime than mine. Apparently, people travel in to my neighborhood to commit crime, mostly burglaries, while I guess in his they assume that there's not much worth stealing? Within his neighborhood it's perfectly safe, and we can bike or walk around, but there's really not much to bike or walk TO. There's no downtown, and although one could bike to the local supermarket, it's all very suburban and intersected with big roads (but not massive roads as in the further out suburbs). It's not a long commute to work, and you COULD bike to work but really you're more car dependent. In the car it only takes me 5 minutes longer to get to work than driving from my place.
There are plenty of ugly 1980's townhomes or nearly-as-ugly 1960's and 1970's single family homes to be had in his neighborhood for not very much money. Not $50k, but the townhomes are about $100k, whereas in my neighborhood the average seems around $400k. The townhomes do come with an HOA fee but they're usually not that much. The single family homes have a likelihood to be next to some trashy neighbors or big families with like 6 trucks parked everywhere. I keep asking myself - how much is a pretty house and a nicer neighborhood worth? Would I force myself to bike places or would I be lazy and just get in the car? Would I find ugly suburbia to be just depressing? Having said that, we're not going to have kids and so I don't have many arguments as to why we shouldn't buy something together in his neighborhood or close by, because with the equity we could release from our current places, we could get somewhere for cash and still have enough money to redo the kitchen or whatever needed to be fixed. That would be a great start for a life together, as we would have no mortgage payment. And yet...I do love the idea of biking to a nice close downtown area. Sigh.