I was just there this past weekend as a scouting trip to see if it’s a place I could move to.
Great outdoors opportunities, not quite as good as Colorado but pretty close. Great greenbelt trails along the Boise river and you can hike/mtn bike all the way from downtown to Bogus Basin.
Decent downtown, could use some better restaurants and shops to make the Boise downtown more vibrant but I’ve heard it’s much better than it was a few years ago.
Housing, you can still get a decent house for under $250k, Boulder requires about $800k and Denver requires around $500k for something comparable.
People say it’s the liberal shithole of Idaho but in all honesty it’s more right than the majority of the US. As for gun restrictions, there really aren’t any which is a huge plus.
Marsing is where there are many wineries and stuff like that popping up. If you can get in to real estate there right now you will probably double Your money in a few years or even sooner. Marsing is close to Nampa which is the west end of the Boise area as well as the fastest growing area of Boise. Nampa has all of the shopping and so on that any average city around the country has.
For me, coming from the Boulder/Denver area, the Boise area to me is fairly small which makes me hesitant, I’m a big city person, yet because of the opportunity available in real estate I am putting serious thought in to moving there.