My issue is that I've heard the cheap housing line for over a decade at this point, but other areas of the country are growing much faster despite having higher housing prices. I lived in Michigan for 7 years and was fed the whole "This is the year of Detroits resurgence" line the whole time I lived there. Now, I'm not going to say that Detroit hasn't improved a lot, but the way people talked about Detroit, you'd think that it was due for Austin levels of growth for at least a decade.

The area has cheap housing, mainly because it doesn't have high paying jobs. If you could move there with a remote tech job, you'd live like a king. Otherwise? Not so much.

I have done roughly this. I don't live in Detroit, but moved from Austin to another rust belt city in Michigan. It also happens to be my hometown, so it's hard to recommend it to people who don't have that connection. I own a home that I definitely couldn't afford in Austin, and life is pretty good. That said, I worry about the job market. I have no desire to leave my current company in the immediate future, but I think I may find it difficult in the current climate. Still, we put enough down on the house (and got the mortgage just before interest rates really popped) that we can easily stay put with just a "replacement-level" job in retail or similar, so it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I should say that, ironically, the reason I grew up here is that my Dad was a Federal employee at a time when there was no cost-of-living adjustment for Federal jobs (meaning his salary would be the same no matter which office he was assigned to, regardless of whether that was NYC or Peoria). He found this city doing research about low cost-of-living cities before putting in for a transfer. Now my daughter is growing up here for essentially the same reason. It's the circle of Midwestern life.

>If you could move there with a remote tech job, you'd live like a king.

While I lived in SE Michigan, the main city that was targeted by remote workers wasn't Detroit, it was Ann Arbor. Housing prices there were already elevated due to U of M, but they spiked up more than surrounding areas did during the abnormally low interest rate era. People weren't moving to Livonia or Taylor despite the fact that they had lower housing prices than Ann Arbor because they wanted Ann Arbors amenities. Now, you won't have a bad life, but living like a king may be a bit too far unless you move outside of the well known areas.