People Fleeing cities? Not according to Zillow

In the end. 12 years later we managed 25% value increase when we sold it. It took 10 yrs to break even, then it started to take off. Now I wish I hadn't sold the first home but kept it as a rental. We're be making a killing. But ya live and learn and work with what you have.

While I'm with @rtraverdavis, I'd miss the mountains terribly, and living a few hrs from my family isn't bad, part of me sees stuff like this and I just want to send in my two weeks. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/810-Cornell-Ave-Newell-SD-57760/194901962_zpid/
View attachment 173792
You can do better than Newell, trust me!
 
Wife and I finally found a house we liked a few weeks ago and put an offer in. Our realtor suggested at least 25k over asking on an already overpriced house. I couldn’t stomach doing that so we offered 15k over, still made me sick. 3 others offered the same as we did, except no one else requested an inspection. That didn’t matter anyway because someone else got the house for a higher all cash offer and no inspection. Houses are listed, booked up for viewings in a few hours and sold in a weekend for well over asking. I’m conflicted because I’m a cheap bastard and don’t want to overpay. I would also like to not have a neighbor on the other side of my wall anymore.
 
You know, it's been said, "You can have anything, but you can't have everything". If you want to live in Montana, you can. Buy your home, get a truck and a car that last a long time, and avoid all other things with motors, and you'll be fine. It's the jet skis, 4 wheelers, ski boats, and travel trailers, etc. which we see kill young folks financially. You can buy great camping, hunting, and fishing gear, and a raft or canoe, for a pittance compared to a camp trailer. Plus your kids will learn how to enjoy the actual outdoors.

If you have extra money after funding 401Ks and emergency savings, put a little extra toward the principal on your home loan. Then, you can always refinance to lower your monthly payment when (if) the mortgage rates crater again.

I was thinking the same thing over coffee this morning. I’ve had way more properties than new cars/trucks over the last 20 years.

**Success often comes disguised as hard work...

*Argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours...”Richard Bach”

Fear of failure can be so debilitating....
 
You know, it's been said, "You can have anything, but you can't have everything". If you want to live in Montana, you can. Buy your home, get a truck and a car that last a long time, and avoid all other things with motors, and you'll be fine. It's the jet skis, 4 wheelers, ski boats, and travel trailers, etc. which we see kill young folks financially. You can buy great camping, hunting, and fishing gear, and a raft or canoe, for a pittance compared to a camp trailer. Plus your kids will learn how to enjoy the actual outdoors.

If you have extra money after funding 401Ks and emergency savings, put a little extra toward the principal on your home loan. Then, you can always refinance to lower your monthly payment when (if) the mortgage rates crater again.

I think most of the young people doing this learned it from their parents that are aged 50s-70s and are still neck deep in payments complaining the only reason they can't retire is not enough income.
 
Still got the mountains and greener pastures. Lots of properties like this one to pick from. Hard to justify what land in the West is going for these days. Limited private property and year round accessibility make good properties only more rare and valuable. I would like to retire in the country but where is the real question.

 
24 just married, all of 9 months into my career and this was our situation. I debated declaring bankruptcy... not a place I would want to go again.
Meanwhile that crash was a huge blessing to some of us. I'd been married about 1.5 years, only 1 year at my job, and had to borrow $1,000 for a down-payment that I repaid with the first time homebuyer grant 3 months after closing. But, we bought at the bottom of the market and our home has appreciated by over 100% since June 2009. Plus, buying was as cheap or cheaper than renting in our market.

It was a scary choice so close to the crash but it's been one of the best decisions we ever made.
 
Meanwhile that crash was a huge blessing to some of us. I'd been married about 1.5 years, only 1 year at my job, and had to borrow $1,000 for a down-payment that I repaid with the first time homebuyer grant 3 months after closing. But, we bought at the bottom of the market and our home has appreciated by over 100% since June 2009. Plus, buying was as cheap or cheaper than renting in our market.

It was a scary choice so close to the crash but it's been one of the best decisions we ever made.
Yep, I've watched 4 engineers get hired after me that are all much better off than I because of their market timing
 
Yep, I've watched 4 engineers get hired after me that are all much better off than I because of their market timing

It's really tough man. A friend of mine was convinced that the market was going to crash again and waited probably an additional 10 years to buy his house. All that happened is that he missed out on a ton of equity. To say we got lucky to be in the position we were is a huge understatement.

You were smart though. I have heard a lot of people down here, who walked away from homes, say that they wish they would have just kept making their payment because they would have recovered much sooner than they expected.
 
It's really tough man. A friend of mine was convinced that the market was going to crash again and waited probably an additional 10 years to buy his house. All that happened is that he missed out on a ton of equity. To say we got lucky to be in the position we were is a huge understatement.

You were smart though. I have heard a lot of people down here, who walked away from homes, say that they wish they would have just kept making their payment because they would have recovered much sooner than they expected.
I would have been better off leaving the keys on the counter for the bank and renting. But walking away isn't in me.
 
It's really tough man. A friend of mine was convinced that the market was going to crash again and waited probably an additional 10 years to buy his house. All that happened is that he missed out on a ton of equity. To say we got lucky to be in the position we were is a huge understatement.

You were smart though. I have heard a lot of people down here, who walked away from homes, say that they wish they would have just kept making their payment because they would have recovered much sooner than they expected.

Being full time military, I get moved around the country a lot. The Canadian housing market has completely exploded, mainly due to foreign investments but that's a different topic.

I know three types of guys in the military:
1. Those who have gotten a lucky streak in postings and have consistently been posted in before a certain market boomed and made profits like 100k, 20k, 50k, etc. and now have managed to pay off their entire mortgage in a short period of time. These guys get posted to areas where the market is completely ridiculous and can afford a house there because of several postings "at the right time". I know military members who can afford 750k houses on NCM salaries, that says a lot (good for them TBH);
2. Those who have had an absolutely crappy streak of bad luck and have amassed tons of debt on their houses when they had to sell. These people are screwed and try to get by pay cheque by pay cheque; and
3. The guys who live in military housing because they can't afford houses on postings where the local market lists houses for 400k+ and have to rely on a sole income for an undetermined period of time while their spouse tries to find employment.
 
Meanwhile that crash was a huge blessing to some of us. I'd been married about 1.5 years, only 1 year at my job, and had to borrow $1,000 for a down-payment that I repaid with the first time homebuyer grant 3 months after closing. But, we bought at the bottom of the market and our home has appreciated by over 100% since June 2009. Plus, buying was as cheap or cheaper than renting in our market.

It was a scary choice so close to the crash but it's been one of the best decisions we ever made.
Same thing happened to us. My wife had been looking for a bigger home for 18 months and we ended up finding a foreclosure that the bank was selling in early 2009. Contractor had built it for himself and lost everything in the crash. He had spared no expense (2 Wolf ovens, sub-zero fridge, etc.). Anyway, we put in a full offer (this was a Saturday and it had just been listed) and by Monday there were 5 offers in addition to ours but the bank just went with offer #1 which was ours. Fast forward to today and the house is easily worth 150% of what we paid for it.

This was home #2 for us and I should have kept home #1 for a rental but I couldn't stomach the thought of 2 mortgage payments at the time so we sold. Hindsight...

Our plan is to move as soon as the kids are gone. Property taxes are outrageous here and I'm not paying that for the rest of my life. But, where to go is the big question...
 
@neffa3 we almost pulled the trigger with a house there about 6 years back when Chelan PUD had come knocking...things appeared to be just taking off then but we decided not to go. Looks like it’s been soaring ever since 25% YOY 🤯16264402-8A8D-4315-9F90-10AFD7C5C64D.png
 
I would have been better off leaving the keys on the counter for the bank and renting. But walking away isn't in me.
Considering your 25% eventual equity I'm surprised to hear you say that. Is renting cheaper in your market?

We'll be keeping our current place as a rental when we move to TN. As a long term rental we could easily rent it for $800 above our current mortgage (even with a cash out refi in 2017). As a short term rental it will do even better.
 
At one point in time I owned 3 4-plexs that I built from the ground up in Belgrade, MT. I sold them for a nice profit and never looked back. Being a landlord requires a special breed, and I learned real quickly it wasn't me.
We'll be using a management company for sure. If it doesn't work out I'm not opposed to dumping it and pocketing the equity.
 
I've been looking for some more recreational land in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico primarily, but have looked in Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, etc. as well.

Oregon actually has some decent prices on recreational land, I was surprised at that. Also as some have mentioned, for recreational land (not ag land) the midwest has some pretty good prices, also places like Kentucky, Tennessee, New York, etc. Pretty nice places with nice trees, some elevation, even some live water. As a general rule probably half the price of a comparable piece of property out west. There are some pretty decent properties for sale here in Texas as well.

Kind of been looking for place with low taxes, etc. with landowner tags and all the stuff like that that everyone wants. Seems the prices on places like that have jumped pretty good. Not quite as much as the smaller pieces, but still quite a bit.

Of course the further you get from a town of 50,000+ the better prices you can get just about anywhere.
 
At one point in time I owned 3 4-plexs that I built from the ground up in Belgrade, MT. I sold them for a nice profit and never looked back. Being a landlord requires a special breed, and I learned real quickly it wasn't me.

My wife and I bought a run down duplex 3 years ago after moving to Coeur d'Alene. Price seemed high coming from the midwest and it took a lot of time and some $$ to get fixed up. Our renters are good, but I don't like getting a phone call about a leaky pipe or whatever else comes up during hunting season.

Don't want to pay a management company either, so listing it for sale next month to cash out on the equity is going to feel good. Pretty good profit for three years, but I suppose we could be retired now if we had put it all in TSLA.
 
Considering your 25% eventual equity I'm surprised to hear you say that. Is renting cheaper in your market?

We'll be keeping our current place as a rental when we move to TN. As a long term rental we could easily rent it for $800 above our current mortgage (even with a cash out refi in 2017). As a short term rental it will do even better.
Yeah at our interest rate it was. Bankruptcy only last 7 years, we were under water for 9.
 
I totally see city folks leaving. I live about 1.5 hours away from Toronto and we see it will housing prices skyrocketing (between 30-40% a year) it's becoming to expensive to live here. Our average house now cost 640k while the average wage for this area is 32k.
 
Housing market has accelerated recently. Heard of several examples of housing listed for >$1M getting offers over asking in first couple days. Both locally here, and also some examples in AZ and CO. Nuts.



Rowley recalled a home in Hayden listed for $1.2 million that didn’t sell in 2020. It was listed on the market again this month at $1.5 million. The sellers had multiple offers within a few hours and a $100,000 price run-up, he said.
 
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