I'd quibble with some of your points. The rent on the 2-acre place my ex and I rented in San Jose is approximately the same as the 15-year mortgage on my 6-acre place in Mississippi. But I can't call a landlord when my tub is stopped up.

We had an electric car, so we got access to the HOV lane and charging was cheaper than gas. Actually our car payments + charging were cheaper than gas, thanks to government subsidies.

Most areas that have really low COL, like where I am, have negligible public transit, and walking and cycling are completely impractical, due to poor infrastructure and drivers who are unused to avoiding human beings in or near the road that are not encased in steel. Even where we lived in SJ, we could walk to breakfast or to get groceries on the weekend. Cycling was less practical due to the steep hill we lived on and our relative level of unfitness. But high levels of density and decent public transit drastically reduce the need for a car.

On the flip side, people in low COL areas often NEED to work remotely, because there aren't any local jobs paying decent money. I'm just glad I'm too old to need to worry that I could die because good reproductive healthcare isn't available in my state. That's something developers should think about before moving to some place like Florida. Not just their life-threatening laws, but also the fact they're very uncomfortable places to try to make friends or read the local news if you're at all liberal-leaning. And let's face it, more than half of us are.