Last updated on October 29, 2025
There will come a day, perhaps a few months or a few years after you’ve moved to Bisbee, when the spell breaks. It might happen when you’re dealing with another water main break, or when a tourist walks into your living room “by accident,” or when you realize you haven’t had a decent internet connection in a week. The charming patina will flake away, and you will see the town for what it is: a trap. And at that moment, a single, terrifying thought will enter your mind: “I have to get out.” This is when you will discover the final, cruelest joke Bisbee has to play. Getting out is infinitely harder than getting in.
The first step in your escape plan will be to sell your house. Remember that century-old, money-pit-of-a-house you bought? Remember the crumbling foundation, the faulty wiring, the leaky roof, and the approval you never got from the review board for that new fence? Now you have to find another dreamer, another sucker who hasn’t read this guide, to take it off your hands. The market for structurally compromised, difficult-to-insure, functionally obsolete homes in a town with no economy is, to put it mildly, not robust.
Your house will sit on the market for months, maybe years. The tiny pool of potential buyers is made up of other equity refugees and retirees looking for a fantasy, and their numbers are finite. While you wait, you are still a prisoner. You are still paying the mortgage, the exorbitant insurance premiums, and the endless repair bills. Your life is on hold, tethered to this albatross of a property. Every day the “For Sale” sign remains in your yard is another day the Isolation Tax and the social friction eat away at your soul.
When an offer finally does come, it will be insultingly low. The buyer’s inspection report will be a horror novel, a 100-page document detailing every flaw you’ve spent years trying to ignore. They will demand concessions. They will demand repairs you can’t afford and can’t find a contractor to perform. You will be forced to choose between selling at a significant financial loss or remaining trapped indefinitely. The “affordable” dream home has become your most toxic asset.
The social dynamics of leaving are just as painful. In a town where gossip is the main currency, your escape attempt is front-page news. Your departure is seen as a betrayal, a judgment on the town and the people in it. The same neighbors who barely spoke to you before will now offer unsolicited advice or thinly veiled criticisms. The process is not just a financial nightmare, but an emotionally draining ordeal.
Bisbee is a one-way street. It’s easy to coast down into the canyon, seduced by the views and the promise of a different life. But the road out is a steep, treacherous, uphill climb, and the town will do everything in its power to hold you back. Before you even consider the journey in, you must understand that there may be no easy way out.