Great place to visit, difficult city to live in
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6/1/2019
I've lived here since I was born (I'm 27 now) and it is an amazing place to live for grand traverse bay alone, which really shines in the summertime. Let's be clear, though; It's a great place to visit, but a difficult place to live in full time unless you have an income above 80k/year. rent and home prices are very high due to high demand from the large amount of wealthy old citizens moving here for retirement.
Another potential downside is our oftenly brutal winters. We are up north, by huge lakes so naturally we get a lot of lake effect snow in the wintertime. This problem may not matter to you if you can afford to live in Florida during the wintertime, though. The traffic also tends to suck here and when it's cherry festival week, forget driving anywhere on the main roads unless you don't mind long delays. However if you enjoy biking as your main method of transportation, then you may come to love it here.
Overall, the city has changed a lot the past 30 years. It used to be a smaller, more peaceful town as I've heard from older locals of traverse city, but in the 90s' things started changing...and here we are now where if you don't have a cushy job, you may have to work 2-3 jobs in order to make end's meet here, unless you elect to rent or buy in a surround city/area such as Kalkaska, Buckley, Honor, Lake Ann, Thompsonville, or Kingsley, so long as you don't mind the extra commute to get into town. As they say around here, a view of the BAY is half the PAY
There are other benefits to living here too though, as we are resistant to natural disasters. like we rarely get tornadoes for me and earthquakes as well as hurricanes are unheard of here. However, brutal blizzards in the wintertime do happen so keep that in mind.
Brendon | Traverse City, MI