My childhood home is a nice brick 5 bed/3 bath, more than 3000 sf. Five years ago it went for $140k. It is located in a quiet small town 30 minutes from a real city. Built in the 1960s and still in good condition.
Another childhood home, 3 bed/2 bath and 1900 sf, is worth $55k currently. Also a brick home in relatively good condition, built in the 1920s, though considerably further from a real city.
These are places I actually lived. People seriously underestimate how cheap housing is in the US once you leave the big city.
If you go to a national park and live in a tent, that's even cheaper. The point of being in proximity to a big city is the opportunity it affords - better jobs and better mate prospects.
Absolute price of a property only matters in a vacuum, e.g. if you're already independently wealthy and can live off of remote investments and not need a day job. In fact, in most cases, without markets distorted by things like Prop 13, the price of real estate is a pretty good proxy for the opportunities afforded by living there: Jobs/Mates/Schools.
The commute to a city job from those places was 30 minutes. People that live in places like the Bay Area often spend more time commuting within the city to a job than people that live in one of these outlying areas and smaller cities. A forgettable "small city" in the US often has the same population as a second-tier city in Europe.
These places are not that desirable if you are looking for a cosmopolitan life, but we're talking about Homer Simpson here. Most people are much closer to Homer Simpson than a mega-city globetrotter.
Homer Simpson visited all 7 continents, along with two trips to outer space. So I guess the lesson is that unskilled labourers in the 1990s had a much easier time affording frequent international travel than people today, if you take the Simpsons as some sort of documentary. And apparently the type of writer who gets published in the Atlantic these days does just that.
Any place in the US with a house worth $140k or $55k must not be anywhere near numerous opportunities to earn income. When income sources become more volatile, you need to value being in an area where there are numerous people interested in buying your labor.
Power plants are not located inside expensive metro areas. Not everyone can work at a power plant like Homer, but that was also true when The Simpsons first started.
Another childhood home, 3 bed/2 bath and 1900 sf, is worth $55k currently. Also a brick home in relatively good condition, built in the 1920s, though considerably further from a real city.
These are places I actually lived. People seriously underestimate how cheap housing is in the US once you leave the big city.