"When I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to be with my boyfriend in 2018, I fell hard for city life. After growing up in a small town in Virginia where weekend plans meant driving an hour to DC, I loved having museums, comedy shows, bars, and restaurants just a short walk away. We lived between Uptown and South End, able to walk to work during the day and hit our favorite spots at night."
"But as the years passed, the city began to wear us down. Every new apartment tower brought more crowds, more traffic, and fewer familiar faces. We found ourselves feeling like strangers in our own neighborhood. The endless variety of restaurants and bars, once exciting, now felt impersonal. We missed that small-town sense of community we'd once wanted to escape. I wasn't ready to leave the city, but we started looking anyway Around the time my partner and I got engaged in 2023, we started house hunting."
Moving to Charlotte in 2018 provided immediate access to museums, comedy shows, bars, restaurants, and walkable commutes between Uptown and South End. Over time, increased development, crowding, and traffic eroded neighborhood familiarity and made restaurants feel impersonal, creating a longing for small-town community. Engagement and house hunting in 2023 revealed single-family homes were out of budget in Charlotte, so options outside the city were explored. A new-build neighborhood in Denver, North Carolina, forty minutes north offered a peaceful lakeside setting with trees, nature trails, and a pond. The new house met needs and the move restored happiness.
Read at Business Insider
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