No, not the animal. No, not the superhero. We're talking about The University of Michigan Wolverines. The rallying point for a city composed of a variety of different people from different walks of life, Ann Arbor consistently, and rightfully, winds up near the top of the rankings for best college towns in the U.S. While a large reason for that is the Wolverines and University itself, what lifts Ann Arbor above the rest is everything else that comes with it. Ann Arbor has an incredibly healthy job market, a phenomenal restaurant and bar scene, a number of great markets and festivals, and a claim to being one of the most walkable cities in the country with miles of parks and trails. Wolverine central is more than just a college town.

Here's a review from a local:
*I love Ann Arbor; it's more than a "college town" to me. I don't have any particular connection to the university, I just live here and I like it quite well. I'm also biased, however, in that some of my family live here, and I moved here to get away from Illinois.
Living in or near downtown is great. You can walk or bus everywhere, there are plenty of small convenience stores (and the food co-op!) so that you don't really need to go to Walmart/Meijer/Kroger/etc., and there is often something going on.*


The Wolverines

The Best Thing About Ann Arbor? 

It’s tempting to say ‘the weather,’ but if you're considering the midwest that's probably unsurprising. One of the downsides of living in an area that’s a lot more than just a college town is that it costs more than just a small college town. The thriving economy and incredible amenities have driven housing and general cost of living well above state and national averages. It’s still cheaper than mega-cities like nearby-ish Chicago, but, as the saying goes, “you get what you pay for,” and in getting much more here, be prepared for prices that reflect that.

Note from local in response to question if you can live here on $100k for a family of 4: 
*I was in similar situation a few years ago. $100k a year is a breakeven in Ann Arbor. The rental market was more difficult then we expected. It seemed gear towards students and it was expensive. After looking all over, we found a home to rent and it was $2500 per month. This was a couple years ago so probably more expensive now.*

Paying a Price

The Worst Thing About Ann Arbor?

Ann Arbor provides more kinds of living options than you might expect. Downtown has fewer homes, but its proximity not only to all of the businesses but the University, the lively neighborhood of Kerrytown, and massive West Park provide a number of additional social opportunities as well. Neighborhoods like Hailsey are extremely family oriented, and neighborhoods like Burns Park are known for their own great restaurants and parks. Angell, which is home to a lot of student housing, also has large, high end homes if that’s more your price range, with great proximity to the school and “The Big House” (The largest football stadium in the country).

If you're interested in seeing what's happening in Ann Arbor check out the calendar of events: https://www.a2gov.org/pages/calendar.aspx

Lifestyle of Ann Arbor

Cities like this, with big homes, tons of social and cultural options, and plenty of outdoor spaces, are perfect for a world in which more and more people work in front of their computers all day. 

More than just the Wolverines

Why You Should Move Here Now? 

**The Best Thing About Ann Arbor?** The Wolverines

No, not the animal. No, not the superhero. I’m talking about The University of Michigan Wolverines. This city’s greatest obsession and the rallying point for a city composed of a variety of different people from different walks of life, Ann Arbor consistently, and rightfully, winds up near the top of the rankings for best college towns in the United States. While a large reason for that is the Wolverines and University itself, what lifts Ann Arbor above the rest is everything else that comes with it. Ann Arbor has an incredibly healthy job market, a phenomenal restaurant and bar scene, a number of great markets and festivals, and a claim to being one of the most walkable cities in the country with miles of parks and trails. Wolverine central is more than just a college town too.

**The Worst Thing About Ann Arbor?** The Cost

It’s tempting to say ‘the weather,’ but I wanted to do something different than the typical midwest complaint. One of the downsides of living in an area that’s a lot more than just a college town is that, well, it costs more than just a small college town. Due to the thriving economy and multitude of amenities, housing and living prices have climbed well above state and national averages in recent years. It’s still cheaper than mega-cities like nearby-ish Chicago, but, as the saying goes, “you get what you pay for,” and in getting much more than a small stagnant midwest city, be prepared for prices that reflect that.

**How You Living?** Access to Everything

Ann Arbor provides more kinds of living options than you might expect. Downtown has fewer homes, but its proximity not only to all of the businesses but the University, the lively neighborhood of Kerrytown, and massive West Park provide a number of additional social opportunities as well. Neighborhoods like Hailsey are extremely family oriented, and neighborhoods like Burns Park are known for their own great restaurants and parks. Angell, which is home to a lot of student housing, also has large, high end homes if that’s more your price range, with great proximity to the school and “The Big House” (The largest football stadium in the country).
	

**Why You Should Move Here Now?** More than just the Wolverines

Cities like this, with a lot of spacious houses, local amenities, and plenty of outdoor spaces, are ideally situated for a world in which more and more people work in front of their computers all day. That’s just one of the many reasons that more and more people have relocated here in recent years, and there’s still plenty of room. Go Wolverines!


There is plenty of off-campus housing for students in Ann Arbor. If you want to live near the football stadium then Elbel is a popular choice. You also get easy access to Elbel field, an athletic complex that includes a football field, volleyball courts, softball fields, soccer, cricket, rugby and ultimate frisbee fields. So if you want to play or are an athlete this is a good choice. Tappan is a good choice if being near the greek houses are important to you. The Law Quad and Ross School of Business is also in the area so you’ll find plenty of older grad school students in the area. 
- Elbel
- Tappan
- Old Fourth Ward
- Oxbridge

Check out the Umich Off-Campus Housing site for school vetted listings: https://offcampushousing.umich.edu/


Students

Elbel

Ann Arbor has a growing downtown business district with plenty of small tech and creative businesses filling the commercial real estate. For that reason young professionals love to live in the apartments and condos downtown to have a simple walk to work. 

Add to the in-town business district an awesome restaurant and bar scene downtown and you have the basics covered. Throw on top of all that the Art Galleries including the Ann Arbor Art Center, the jazz and other live music clubs, the bookstores, the AA Hands-On Museum, theaters, ice cream shops, and too many other things to list, and you can see why the area is popular for those looking for a good walk score to work and play. 

Check out the Main Street Ann Arbor "things to do" site for a wrap-up of the areas places and activities: https://mainstreetannarbor.org/thingstodo



Young Professionals/DINKs/SINKs

Downtown Ann Arbor

Old West Side is a beautiful historic district that borders downtown. Families can choose from smaller Cape Cod-style homes and much larger older homes to get the best of both worlds. Live on quiet streets but have just a short walk to all the great restaurants, and the culture and social experiences of downtown. You also get to live near the Pioneer High School, state-wide renowned for academics, sports and overall excellence. 

Another great options is Burns Park. Also filled with tree-lined streets and old beautiful homes, the draw to Burns is the historic Burns Park which offers year-round play for families including a great playground, basketball courts, softball fields, tennis courts and a sledding hill for winters. 
- Old West Side
- Burns Park 
- Lowertown


Families

Old West Side / Burns Park Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor

**What is living in Ann Arbor like?**

In short, it's a pretty great city.

It is a college town, and most stuff revolves around the University. Either you work there, or you went for school, or you arrange your commute & plans around University events are happening -- mostly stuff like student move-in, or graduation, or Saturday home football games (110,000 people in town for a football game, in a city that's 110,000 people? Enjoy!). People make wedding plans to avoid home football games, because they often cause totally full hotel rooms in a 15 mile radius.

There's plenty of medium-size town entertainment -- multiple nightclubs, fancy bars, dive bars, fancy restaurants, greasy spoon diners, fast food, shopping malls, multiplex movie theatres, independent movie theatres, concert venues, museums, etc. You're not going to have the kind of nightlife that NYC or Chicago or Toronto would offer, but it's pretty good for a city this size.

The bus transit system is ok. Uber and Lyft are everywhere, and so are Bird scooters for rent (especially around campus). Parking is a pain in downtown and campus, but it's available. Traffic can be annoying sometimes, but it's not as bad as people like to whine. There's a train line that runs between Detroit & Chicago with Ann Arbor in-between, but the routes are pretty limited. It's 30 minutes away from a major airport.

It's not a very outdoorsy town. There are skiing locations within about 30 minutes, but you'd have to travel a few hours to find anything resembling a decent ski hill towards northern Michigan. There's hiking trails and nature paths and bike trails in the area, but it's relatively urban -- this isn't a remote mountain area. The Huron River runs through the city, and there is a livery that rents canoes and paddleboats. There's one or two fenced-in dogparks for no cost. There's other areas that are good for walking dogs, but please please please keep them on a leash. There are also multiple "Metroparks" in a 30-mile radius for a reasonable cost where you can go biking, hiking, canoeing, rollerblading, play disc golf, bird watching, or walk dogs. They're actually quite big. Kensington Metropark is about 4500 acres, and Hudson Mills is 1600 acres with a 9-hole golf course.

We also have one big park within city limits that has an outdoor swimming pool, indoor ice skating arena, 5 baseball fields, a playground for kids, entertainment pavilions, 3 tennis courts, and the best skateboarding park in the state. Restaurants and brew-pubs and grocery stores and great public libraries and other interesting stuff all within walking distance. So that's pretty cool.

**What is living in Ann Arbor like?**

I love Ann Arbor; it's more than a "college town" to me. I don't have any particular connection to the university, I just live here and I like it quite well. I'm also "biased," however, in that some of my family live here, and I moved here to get away from Illinois (bleh).

Living in or near downtown is great. You can walk or bus everywhere, there are plenty of small convenience stores (and the food co-op!) so that you don't really need to go to Walmart/Meijer/Kroger/etc., and there is often something going on.

There is a lot of economic activity concentrated here, and there are so many great small businesses. It is easy to just get to know people and get a decent job here.

We have a great local radio station, WCBN, through the university, and The Blind Pig and Michigan Theater are choice spots for live music in the Midwest.

If you're looking for a small house or duplex, Water Hill is my favorite neighborhood. It's right next to downtown, and the houses there are a bit older and have more character than in other neighborhoods.

Cons: Ann Arbor is a gentrified city. There are a lot of douchey businessmen and skeezy landlords around who are honestly kind of a social nuisance. Lots of people here actually prefer Ypsilanti over Ann Arbor, and see it as less phony and pretentious, and I kinda get that. People also sometimes characterize Ann Arbor as being stuck in a '90s hipster aesthetic, or trying too hard to be a "cool city," like Portlandia or something.

The thing that endlessly intrigues me about Ann Arbor is how laid-back and seemingly lackadaisical aspects of the city governance can be. The police don't seem to do anything (for better and worse), I've seen the mayor jaywalking in mismatching clothes (which I thought was awesome), and the city has been making and granting business licenses for federally illegal marijuana businesses since before marijuana was even legal in Michigan (as of this last state election!).

These are the main bullet-points on Ann Arbor that come to my mind, from my perspective and experience. Overall, I'm glad I moved here and I don't plan on going anywhere else anytime soon!

**What is living in Ann Arbor like?**

I really like Ann Arbor. Tons of great restaurants and events every week. It’s a left leaning town, pretty progressive. The university is intertwined in the city, upside are some great events — academic talks, musical performances, etc... downside for me is football traffic which really limits options a few days a year. Bus system is nice, I can get downtown without a car but I’m not familiar with other systems. Downtown is pretty dog friendly, many businesses let them in and there are water dishes all over. There are quite a few parks you can walk through and a river if you like go kayak or swim (I haven’t done either).

I think people here are nice, but I can sometimes see how it gets a reputation for being uppity. I didn’t know about it until recently, but there’s a brand of coats, I think called Canadian Down or something like that. Stupid things can cost like $800+ and you see them all over. Crazy to me.

**What's life like in Ann Arbor, Michigan?**

I lived in Ann Arbor for 15 years and was born in St Joeseph Hospital, attended Northside elementary and then after 8 years in Flint came back to Study for my undergraduate and graduate degree. I was happy in Ann Arbor and proud of my degrees and my many friends. The people are interesting and honest. The work ethic I learned there and in Flint has been part of my DNA my whole life. I was involved in many activities and tried to run for student government and lost; I also tried out for the soccer team and got cut on the first or second day being far out classed by everyone else many of whom had been recruited.

I spent some time in a faternity and enjoyed it and then found a place with more room and less expensive. I had many great teachers and in my third yearI was treated with great kindness by the head of the Economics department Gardner Ackly who encouraged me to go to business school as an undergrade as I seemed most interested in discussing entrepreneurship and making money then economic theory.He took the time to walked me over to the business school and introduced me to the famous Paul MacCraken who became a mentor for 4 years allowing me an independendet study to write a paper on the “Voting on Michigan’s Tax and Expenditure limitation Admendment’ that was published in the prestigous Public Choice Magazine. Ironically that paper got a lot of attention and I was invited to be part of an economics seminar at Princeton University where live now near the building that the seminar was part of.

In my last year I had a great teacher David lewis who taught me the history of business which has proved very valuable to me as a high school business teacher. i also had a great professor in internatonal finance who was a graduate student from Nigeria who had mastered that often difficult field. Because of his enthusiasm and brilliance in teaching I became intriqued with international finance and was recruited to Ford Motor Company’s legendary Finance staff at World headquarters in Dearborn Michigan to be an analyst in the overseas fiancing department where I spent almost 3 years and held my own with some top PHD’s in international finance.

I can remember almost every day I spent at Michigan and in Ann Arbor and can not think of one time I was unhappy; It may have been one of the happiest times of my life and AnnArbor is the most unpretensious place I ever lived.

Ann Arbor, Michigan