Silicon Valley Too Pricey? Try Silicon Prairie

Last year, with home prices spiking and my family’s income remaining relatively flat, the urge to move from New York City overwhelmed me. My job is portable, so I begged my husband to look for a new job in his field of educational software. After a few tepid attempts, he gave up. Tech companies, it seemed, wanted to set up shop only in (or near) the cities most attractive to skilled workers: San Francisco, NYC, and Seattle, some of the most expensive cities in the country. The Silicon Valley set, we thought, would never move inland.

I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Startups are sprouting in Chattanooga, TN; Provo, UT; and Lincoln, NE—the latter a central part of the Midwest’s “Silicon Prairie.”

Lincoln is home to Hudl, a startup providing video tools for coaches and athletes, at which, according to the Chicago Tribune, tech workers earn an average annual salary of $67,000.

While those wages are way less than the average salary of tech workers in Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County, home to Apple and Adobe ($211,000) or those in Seattle ($99,432) real estate in the Silicon Prairie area is way cheaper. Lincoln’s median home price, for instance, is $145,000. The average home price in Santa Clara County is $838,800, and for that you’re not likely to get more than a modest ranch. In Seattle, the average is $524,925—enough, in some neighborhoods, for a tiny (but adorable) one-bedroom house.

Lincoln—or Provo or Chattanooga, for that matter—may not have the cachet of San Francisco or Seattle, but it sure does have a high quality of life, and a tech company’s endorsement seems to be a calling card for the positive aspects of gentrification. Provo and Chattanooga have both topped “best places to live” lists, and Lincoln could follow.

“The tech echo-boom is already starting to hipsterize Nebraska’s capital city,” the Tribune wrote, adding that the downtown now has “three sushi restaurants, a speakeasy serving $12 cocktails and dozens of startups filling once-abandoned warehouses.”

On the other hand, there is a downside to the tech invasion: With higher-paying jobs come higher prices. Home prices in Lincoln are up almost 14% since 2012, and apartment rents have risen 38%, the Tribune wrote. Denver, another tech hub, has seen double-digit price increases as of late and is often touted as the city with the fastest-rising home prices.

It’s unlikely, though, that tech jobs in all of Silicon Prairie will remake those Midwestern cities in Silicon Valley’s image—that is, unreasonably expensive. In Lincoln, there are only 16 properties over a million dollars; the prices are starting so low that it could take a long time for the prices to outshine the salaries. In the meantime, for less than the median home price in Santa Clara, you can pick up a 4,200 square-front lakefront home.

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