Living in St Louis | Pros and Cons

If you’re living in St Louis or if you’re thinking about living in St Louis, it’s good to know the Pros and Cons of any city. I have got three of each, so stick around.

Hi, my name is Johanna Dueren. I am a real estate agent and broker with Circa Properties here in beautiful St. Louis, Missouri, and today we are talking about the Pros and Cons of living in St. Louis. St. Louis really is a fantastic city but not every city can be perfect so I will start with the Cons of living in St Louis. I have three.

Con #1 of living is St Louis has to do with the weather. In the summer here in St. Louis, we get some crazy, crazy humidity. The kind of humidity that you step out your front door and you are immediately soaking wet with sweat because it just hits you like a wall.

The other part is on the complete other side of the year, in the middle of February you get these weeks where there are like three whole, four whole weeks where there’s no sunshine and it’s very gray and it’s very cold and you really just kind of want to lock yourself in the house and eat potatoes underneath the blankets. So sometimes you just have to do that.

Con #2 of living in St Louis is public transportation in St. Louis. Public transportation here kind of stinks. We do have a bus system and we have the MetroLink, which is the train, but the train only runs on two lines. So we have the train that runs from the airport through the DeBaliviere Station, which is like the central hub and then goes through downtown into Illinois. And then we have the nut, the other line that runs from Shrewsbury through the DeBaliviere Station. And that’s really it.

So you’ve got one line that runs kind of East West up to the airport and one that jets down a little bit South. But you don’t have access to all the rest of the areas of St. Louis through that. So if you’re looking for public transportation needs, St. Louis is not bringing it.

Con #3 of living in St Louis is our riverfront. We really don’t do a good job of using as much of the space in the river front in ways that we could. We just went through a major overhaul of the arch grounds and that park is beautiful and the arch grounds themselves are really nice, but the rest of the riverfront is largely not utilized. If you go to cities like Little Rock, Memphis, Louisville, Nashville, they do such a good job with their riverfront where there’s lots of public space, there’s lots of restaurants, there’s lots of places to sit and overlook the water.

What we have is a view of East St. Louis, which is not magnificent. So I wish that we did more with our riverfront, but in general, the downtown area is great and what they did do with the arch grounds is really nice. That park is a great place to spend some time. But I do wish there was a little bit more done with the riverfront.

Okay. What are the Pros to living in St Louis? There are lots. This was a lot easier list to put together. In fact, I had 10 or 11 items initially off the top of my head, but I’ll stick to three.

Pro #1 of living in St Louis is the cost of living. The cost of living in St Louis is extremely low compared to a lot of the other major cities on the West Coast, on the East Coast in Chicago. When I have clients that come in, especially from Chicago, we do get a lot of people from Chicago. They cannot believe the amount of house that you can get for your money here.

So typically you can get anything from 2000 to 3000 square feet, with three or four bedrooms, with three or four bathrooms, with a nice big yard for somewhere between 300 and $400,000. And I know in a lot of other cities, especially the coastal cities, it’s going to be a whole lot more than that. So people are usually pleasantly surprised when they get here and find out how low the cost of living in St Louis is.

Pro #2 of living in St Louis is that there is no lack of fun things to do in St. Louis. If you’re looking for just generally fun free things to do, Forest Park is a great place to start. The art museum is there, the science center is there, the history museum is there, the zoo is there. All of that is free. There are so many fantastic bars, restaurants and shopping in St. Louis. Great places to go and spend an afternoon. There’s always a fun event going on, whether it’s an art fair or whether it’s a beer fest or a music festival. There are all kinds of fantastic things to do with your time in St. Louis.

Pro #3 of living in St Louis is the people of St Louis. This community is so friendly and people will go out of their way to help anybody. Every time I have clients that come in from out of town, they are always so pleasantly surprised at how quickly they can make friends and how friendly everybody is. The people here in St. Louis are absolutely fantastic.

You have it. They are your Pros and Cons of living in St Louis. Be sure to subscribe down below and hit the bell for any notifications. I put out new videos every week.