I will, even though you are conveniently not telling your exact neighborhood :) (I'm not trying to beat up on you, I swear).
I grew up in Rochester, NY (Western New York... not "Upstate"). It can be amazingly cheap to live there, but doesn't exactly have the vibrancy of a city like DC.
Ha! Another Rochesterian! (I'm always surprised to see "local" people on internet boards for some reason.) And yea,
western NY. Not upstate, anything we can do to further distance ourselves from NYC, lol!
Anyway, yea you can find houses in ROC even cheaper than that if you're willing to... fortify the perimeter. However, modest, well kept homes in decent/good neighborhoods are easily attainable for 50-75k. The first house we put an offer on was 69k and I so wish we had been able to get it. (Seller accepted another offer.) Of course, that was 15 years ago, it's probably all of 85k now.
I live in one of the "expensive" suburbs outside of ROC and even here housing can be relatively reasonable. My sister lives in L.A. and I bet a comparable house would sell for 1 million+ there. I paid less than a 1/4 of that.
The thing that kills us here is property taxes, highest in the nation (by rate). Well, Monroe and Wayne counties keep duking it out for first place. I think we're still #1 though.
It can be a great place to live if you particularly enjoy 4 season outdoors stuff, hiking, camping, mt. biking, skiiing/snowboarding, boating/sailing, hunting/fishing, etc. And golf is huge here for some reason. There are also a ton of music and food festivals all summer long in ROC.