if you're looking to buy, prices are cheap but property taxes are high (like 4% of the home's value).

Most real estate in the area tends to be on the older side.

Renting in this area tends to be a lot more expensive per square foot but, like most places, is the preferable rote if you plan to live there less than say, 5 years. This is especially true in this area as you are likely to see very little price appreciation and property can be difficult to sell (we've been trying to sell our house in a nearby town for over a year).

Beautiful area between May and October. Several gorgeous state parks, the finger lakes, and, of course, church history sites nearby.

Ithaca is a pretty cool place in the quirky, liberal college town sense. Pretty decent restaurant scene for a town of its size. Cornell campus is very nice. The Wegmann's grocery store is amazing.

One thing I don't like about Ithaca is that all of the traffic in town is pretty much funneled along one street, which has about a million traffic lights (so it takes forever to get from one side of town to the other).

There is one LDS chapel in town (one family ward and one student branch). The stake center is in Owego, which is about 30-40 miles away.