The City of Cleveland is in northeast Ohio, along the southern banks of Lake Erie (Canada is on the other side). The population of metro Cleveland is around 1,761,000, which is a slight increase from 2021. It’s a city known for excellent healthcare through The Cleveland Clinic, popular professional sports teams (Go Browns! Go Cavaliers! Go Guardians!), and museums and attractions such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
So there are hundreds of excellent reasons to visit Cleveland, especially if you love museums, a thriving and diverse art scene, good music, great food, and some of the most picturesque parks and green spaces you can find.
Visiting is great, but why not stay a while longer?
If you’ve considered moving to Cleveland, we’d like to extend a personal invitation to our city.
We think you should absolutely relocate here, and we’d like to tell you why.
The Sense of Community
Not sure if you know anyone from Cleveland, but we’re a friendly bunch. And there’s a lot of pride in our city, our community, and our neighborhoods. We love living here. Who wouldn’t? It’s a reasonably priced large city with a great quality of life.
There’s a lot of positive energy in Cleveland, and it’s infectious. The people here are helpful, easygoing, and always happy to tell you something you need to know or share a story about their favorite hometown.
You’ll need a Cleveland t-shirt if you want to fit in. This is serious; just about everyone living in Cleveland has at least one. Wear it proudly.
Experience All Four Seasons in Cleveland
Let their Floridians have their endless sunshine and leave the dark and mysterious skies to our friends in the Pacific Northwest.
In Cleveland, you’ll get all of the seasons and there’s plenty to do inside and outside to help you enjoy each one of them. The lake effect snow that drifts off Lake Erie is especially fun. Lake effect snow is a phenomenon where a mass of cold air moves across long expanses of warmer lake water in the winter. That’s what brings us our snow – more than general precipitation.
So yes, you will need a snow shovel and some good boots when you move to Cleveland. You’ll you’re your winter coats. But the cold is more than tolerable thanks to the beauty of the snow.
And winters don’t last all that long. In the autumn, you’ll enjoy an astonishing expanse of apple-colored leaves. The spring has everything blooming in our parks and neighborhoods and gardens, and the summers bring sunshine and warm days and long hikes and fishing day trips and dinners outdoors.
Cheering for the Local Teams
What Cleveland lacks in major championship wins we make up for in enthusiasm.
Yes, we have all the major sports teams.
No, we have not won a title in more than half a century.
Our moment is coming. Just ask any fan.
Cleveland fans are loyal, whether we’re talking about football (Browns), basketball (Cavaliers), hockey (Monsters), or baseball (Guardians). The local fans hang in there, whether it looks like the win is close or we know there’s not any miracle that will bring it about. We love to rally. We love to be the underdog.
Does this sound fun? It is. Cleveland has four professional sports teams, plenty of minor league teams, and athletics at the university level that provide engaging ways to become part of the community. Choose a team and cheer them on.
Enjoy a Low Cost of Living in Cleveland
It’s almost like we’re getting away with something.
Inflation and other market factors have driven prices up everywhere, and Cleveland is not immune to that. However, cost of living remains reasonable, especially compared to other cities of this size.
In Cleveland, there’s a great quality of life for a fairly accessible cost of living. In fact, the cost of living in Cleveland is 27.4 percent lower than the national average. It’s even lower than the average cost of living in Ohio. For residents, this means lower grocery bills and fueling costs. Utilities and transportation cost less than they would elsewhere, and entertainment and recreation are not inaccessible activities for people from various economic classes.
Housing is especially affordable, and we’ll talk about that more later in this blog. First, we want to keep loving on Cleveland.
Cleveland’s Parks and Nature
If you love the outdoors, you’re going to love living in Cleveland.
More than 150 parks can be found in the city. The Cuyahoga Valley National Park is nearby, and Cleveland has been called the “Emerald Necklace” because of the circle of greenery surrounding the City of Cleveland.
Parks here provide great hiking, biking, and jogging. There are opportunities for bird watching, plenty of waterfalls, and of course the large shoreline that stretches along the banks of Lake Erie. This allows for beach days, picnics, and stunning lake views.
Some of the more popular outdoor activities here are kayaking, canoeing, boating, fishing, paddle boarding, jet skiing, and wildlife watching. There’s also golf and tennis and camping and horseback riding.
With Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River offering so many opportunities for recreation, there’s never a reason to stay indoors unless you want to.
Cleveland’s Economy, Job Prospects, and Housing Market
We could probably write a whole book talking about why it’s so great to live in Cleveland. There’s so much to say about the food scene, the breweries, the shops, and the arts and the museums. We’ve talked about recreation and the snow and the seasons.
But, what do you really want to know before you move to a new city?
You want to know what it means for your money.
Let’s talk about that.
- Local Cleveland Economics
Cleveland’s economy is strong and growing. Over the last 10 to 12 years, the city has invested more than $430 million in developing and attracting businesses. There’s a major medical center in Cleveland and a handful of Fortune 1000 companies that are adding revenue and opportunity into the local economy all the time. Some of the main industries in Cleveland include healthcare, banking, finance, education, insurance, manufacturing, sports, and technology. It’s a great place to start a business.
- Job Opportunities in Cleveland
Online employment expert Glassdoor ranked Cleveland as the fifth best city for jobs in 2020. They noted a high level of job satisfaction among workers. There was also a robust number of job openings across different sectors and a low cost of living. LinkedIn also rated Cleveland the third best city in the U.S. for anyone beginning a new career. There’s a large number of college graduates moving into the area, and a lot of local employers are targeting that demographic specifically when hiring.
Major employers include the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, the local school district, Case Western Reserve University, and Sherwin Williams.
It’s hard to talk about jobs and economics without discussing education. Cleveland has some great schools as well. The state and local investment in education means excellent academics through the public system from elementary through high school.
When it comes to higher education, Cleveland has options for college-bound students of any age. Case Western, Cleveland State University, John Carroll University, Notre Dame College, and Baldwin Wallace University are just some of the public and private colleges and universities found in Cleveland. For artists, there’s also the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Cleveland Institute of Music.
- Cleveland’s Housing Market
If housing seems unaffordable and out of reach elsewhere, you’ll find something in your budget in Cleveland. More than half of Cleveland’s population owns their homes. The typical home value in the Cleveland metro area is $221,716. That’s probably where it will peak as the nationwide real estate market begins to cool. The increase is notable, however. It’s a 40.6% jump since August of 2019.
Rents are on the rise. With many people feeling like this may not be the best time to buy, tenants are staying in place longer, or renters who thought they’d buy something this year are deciding not to. Over the summer of 2022, rental listings in the City of Cleveland increased an average of 16.2 percent. That’s a big jump, but consider that average rents are still low against a national scale. The median rent falls at around $1,200 per month.
Cleveland has a lot of the amenities and opportunities that most American big cities offer, but there are fewer challenges and downsides that often come with living in a modern city. We have been able to manage and contain traffic, pollution, and crowding.
If you’re serious about potentially moving to Cleveland, we’d love to help you make it happen. Talk to us about your housing needs and other logistics. We love working with new residents, and we’d be happy to share all the tools, resources, and knowledge that we have. Please contact us at IIP Management. We work with owners in Cleveland Heights, Lakewood, Lyndhurst, Parma, Solon, and South Euclid (Cuyahoga County).
