According to this article Buffalo should be in the top 50 places to live.

Buffalo goes head-to-head with most of the Top 50 and comes out ahead.

Sperling can’t speak for Kiplinger’s, which chose the Top 50. But he said Buffalo is a contender just for its low-cost housing and quality of life.

“People are working hard to bring [Buffalo] back,” Sperling said by phone from Oregon. “Look at the downtown development you’re doing.”

Add Great Lakes boating, fishing and swimming; skiing an hour from downtown; two pro sports teams and low-crime, school-rich suburbs, and we’re knocking on the Top 50 door.

Within a two-hour drive lie Toronto, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Chautauqua Institution. What besides cornfields is within two hours of No. 10 Iowa City?. And I’ll take our blizzards over No. 1 Nashville’s tornadoes any day.

Granted, we get killed on projected job growth (none) and high taxes. But on balance, Buffalo stands higher than most.

Hmm…last time I looked at Buffalo it had a negative job & population growth for the past 20 years and also the average salary had been dropping for the past 10 years too. The property tax was also very high. I think it was around 5-6%. When investing you always follow job and population growth, so I was wondering if this data had changed and whether I should reconsider investing there. Rather than dig up my old sources and go through the data again, I thought I’d rather ask the author of the article, Don Esmonde.

It was very nice of him to reply.

Lots of government-related, and many associated with academic institutions (SUNY at Buffalo, a handful of 4-year colleges, etc)…Also a number of manufacturing (GM, Ford) jobs…As the saying goes, this is a nice place to live — if you’re got a decent job…