Life continues in the time of the great plague…
I was reading an article, and then confirmed it by checking real estate listings, that says people are fleeing the major population centers in droves and purchasing property in out-of-the-way locales like Montana. This is my surprised face. /s
Two things keep everyone from moving to Montana: economics and the weather. We have some nasty and long winters, and that tends to keep some people away. The bigger factor was economics: jobs don’t grow on trees here (although it used to be you could get jobs cutting trees down). But if there is one thing that the Kung Flu has taught us, it is that all those jobs that we were told could not be done from home can, surprise!, be done from home. As a result, there’s a lot of people who are discovering that they can keep their Chicago, L.A., or Dallas salary while living in a remote place like Montana.
This happened before in the id 1980’s…Montana became the place to be. it tapered off a little, hit the map again when the Y2k thing came up, and then sorta died down a bit. But, make no mistake, the notion that you can move to Montana and buy a couple miles of beautiful land for a few dollars is pure fantasy. Oh, there’s parts of the state, eastern mostly, where you can buy some big chunks of land for a few thousand dollars an acre but you’re talking flat-as-a-cookie-sheet, middle of nowhere, no water, no utilities, might-as-well-be-on-the-moon types of parcels. And, for some people, thats ideal. Most folks though want something with, you know, water. And septic. And electricity.
If you think you’ll move to one of the larger cities in Montana be prepared to pay dang near as much as if you were living in NY or Seattle. The median house price in this college town is around $250k, and most houses are north of that going as high as half a million.
And, unfortunately, the problem with people from NYC, L.A., and Chicago moving out here is that they bring their attitudes (and voting records) with them and wind up turning the new place into the place they just left. There was a time in this state when having a California license plate on your car was a recipe for getting some major attitude and bad vibes from the locals. Still is in some places.
It’s going to be a reverse Grapes Of Wrath… instead of poor rural dwellers heading to the promised land of big cities it’s going to be affluent urbanites heading to the bucolic idyll of the country.
I suppose it was inevitable that eventually the telecommuting promise that we were made thirty years ago would finally come to pass.
So, this will be another consequence of the Kung Flu…a surge in population in my beloved Treasure State. And a lot of that surge being people coming in from states that I’d just as soon build a fence around and lock the gate.
For those of you who continue to live in more urban locales, perhaps it’ll be a buying opportunity as motivated sellers try to get out ‘to the country’. For those of us already here…well…it’s gonna kinda suck.
Twice I have looked at Idaho and Montana… and twice I have decided to NOT take the plunge.
Property prices were a significant factor; another was the high levels of liberal rules and viewpoints. Jobs were also an issue, but the the final and deciding factor (for me) were the extensive property use rules and regulations, are actually MUCH more intrusive than many parts of the country – with state wide planning, permitting, and zoning requirements the local government has complete control over what you can do on your property, as well as getting rid of privacy under the guise of enabling them to send out ‘code enforcement’ officers who don’t need warrants or a reason to ‘inspect’ your property, who, of course, can tell police or child services anything they see or claim to have seen.
Additionally, those areas are known to be hotspots of individualism and free thought; when the crackdown comes, they will be focused on more than other areas.
I’ve got a fairly good situation here, but I’m still looking for a better one and I am not looking anymore at the Inland Northwest; my best options so far are in the lower Midwest or deep South.
don’t come to the deep south. the summers here are as brutal as our tolerance for yankie leftist’s. you WILL NOT like it here
Or “Yankee”, even.
I wanted to buy land, couple hundred acres of so, in Wyoming 30 something years ago, went as far as actually driving up and visiting several places in the state, Lander, Rock Springs, Medicine Bow areas primarily…
I was working on drilling rigs in the gulf at the time, 14 days on 14 days off, so as long I had access to an reasonable sized airport all was good to go as work went.
Absolutely amazing places with views to die for, I still regret not going ahead with it but at the time my son was young and if I went I was going alone.
Woulda ,coulda, shoulda……
I read a lot of these stories, too, which make me chuckle. Many of these folks in NYC, Newark, Baltimore, etc. think they’re “moving to the country” just because they’re relocating to a suburb 10 miles outside the city center.
They are going to be sorely disappointed when they realize the bolsheviks can drive there too, in about 15 minutes.
No tears will be shed here, deep in the Maine forest.
Living 15 miles from a city line in the northeast/mid-atlantic area is not far enough for us. We are in the process of renovating the current homestead and hopefully making a move in the next 1-3 year timeframe. I thank the plandemic for this, because my wife has finally seen the light and realizes that our suburban environment is going from bad to worse very quickly. Getting out of here is the number one priority for us.
Better hurry that plan up.
I agree with Buckshot. You don’t have 1-3 years.
Moved out of southern N.M. 4 years ago, wife and sons love inland N.West.
People easy going, and place is Beautiful. Lots to do. No bilingual, heat with wood, no cartels, great trails for exploring, I thank God daily.
Jonathan touched on it, but to live in peace and not have rich liberals move in all around you you need to have: 1) live on a dirt road, our county will not pave a road until all landowners pay for the paving, so that is not happening. Rich folks hate to have a dirty car. 2) Have no or very limited zoning regulations, many trailers on our dirt road, no rich liberal wants to live next to ‘redneck trailer trash’ with 3 generations of vehicles in the front lawn. 3) property tax increases that are always voted down by yer kin and neighbors. Liberals want all the ‘good things’, poor folk want to hang onto their $. 4) have poor internet speed, there is nothing worse for a liberal that can’t down load Huffington Post or some other rag to read. I read about the riots and crazy Marxists but they are no where near us. I hear about a lot of folks moving to the country, but haven’t seen any near us.
My rural place is an hour outside of a big midwest city. I’ve seen more new driveway culverts going in in the last 6 months than in the last 6 years. There’s a big migration happening here. I smell opportunity.
Moved to MT in the fall of last year. Funky circumstances, but I’d already been looking to both MT and ID for a very long time.
Sold the house in Puget Sound region for an insane amount of money, and bought one here 1.5 times the size of the place we left behind for half the money, though the lot is much smaller. We’re now in a smaller town in central MT, and I, at least, am rejoicing that there are 4 actual seasons here. I emptied my smaller retirement account and the house is now mortgage-free.
I didn’t get the 20 acres well outside of town that I wanted, but I have what looks to be a very good job. I can save for the property after I get my larder stocked.
I consider myself the anti Lemony Snicket…
The Real Kurt
Same thing here in Michigan. Couple days ago in this fly speck of a village I live in I saw a car at one of the two gas stations wearing North Carolina plates. Five minutes later I saw a large pickup at the Dollar General wearing plates from Commifornia. .
Couple days later I was in a neighboring town at Wallies. I counted 17 cars and vehicles wearing plates from Missouri, Minnesota, Commiefornia, New York and other states.
Heard a report yesterday about the realestate market shifting from a buyers market to a sellers market. It related a shortage of single family homes. We are also seeing that people are flooding into Michigan renting lake cabins to get out of the large cities.
If they come here to stay we can only hope they leave their Commie Lib voting ways in their former states of residence.
MIchigan Prepper: Sadly, I wager that they won’t.
After all, it worked SOOO well where they came from, right? And, well, “REAL! socialism hasn’t been tried, yet!” (Mr. Tse-Dung, Mr. Pol Pot, Mr. Castro: Conference call on line one!”)
Actually we have enough Commies here. The eastern corner of the lower peninsula is refered to as the Bolshevik corner.
The termites from Massachusetts managed to destroy Vermont in about 30 years. And Vermont was a red as you could get. Now nothing but Reds like Bernie the Bolshevik.
Everything these people touch they destroy. My family traces our lineage to the Mayflower. I’ve had relatives in every war since the French and Indian war. What I see going on pisses me off to no end. Look what they did to California. And the cities like San Francisco and San Diego. Nothing but open toilets and drug addicted illegals.
If it comes to open warfare the best policy is take no prisoners.
Don’t forget about Alaska, especially around the Kenai Peninsula. Weather is some of the best in all Alaska and 17 hour summer days at 65 to 70 doesn’t hurt either. Great growing season and winter is mild compare to MT and parts of ID. I love the area, and hopeful that will be where my next move is too.
1) Enjoy Montana while it lasts. The people moving there aren’t natives of California, nor any of the other three or five states they moved from before alighting in your neighborhood. They are thus properly known as gypsies and refugees, and the morals of gypsies and refugees is what they will bring, in all cases. Sorry to say it, but you (for any value of the word) deserve them for not pricing them out of your market pre-emptively, and having the people your friends and neighbors decry camped in amongst you will be good for your humility and sympathy when they were just the weekly California or NYFC joke last month.
Ask the folks in Boulder, Sundance, or Sedona about how funny it is when you’re living it 24/7/365/forever, endlessly, and it’s not Bahstun, Palm Beach, or Hollyweird you’re reading about.
2) Neither will there be any real estate bargains where they left when they leave.
a) They will not accept anything less than top dollar, else they won’t relocate.
b) P.T. Barnum’s observation about a sucker born every minute is the lifeblood of the real estate business on either coast. And there is ALWAYS some schmuck willing to shell out $500K-10M in the Hamptons, Manhattan, or the Left Coast on what would be a $40K bungalow if it was in BFEgypt, or halfway between Pigknuckle and Hootenholler.
3) I can find far better rural real estate here for vastly less than there, and never have to shovel snow to get yo it in any month of the year, unlike in MT. But like there, it’s off-grid (which is a feature, not a bug), and lacks city water, power, internet, or a sewer hook up. Again, feature, not bug. And there are no handy jobs, so no commuters living there.
(Be still, my beating heart!) In fact, either you move there because you can make a living there despite all that; or because you’re retiring there, and don’t give a damn either way.
For me, both reasons will be in play.
The trick is finding someplace worth moving to, and then telling other people that somewhere ELSE is a better idea, for THEM.
I promise not to talk up MT and ID, (hey, I’m a giver) but they’ll probably figure it out without a word from me.
Bummer, huh?
Now you know how *I* feel when I think about what CA was like, before 20M ne’er-do-wells from 40 other states turned it into Califrutopia.
If you’re enterpreneurial, maybe market Montana Mosquito Repellent(c) to the newcomers, with 40% sugar by volume, until they run screaming back to their cars, and move on to North Dakota or Wyoming.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Hereabouts, we tried sending the yokels to swim in the surf downstream from the sewage outflows, which they did, but we just ended up raising two generations of well-tanned bumpkins immune to hepatitis, but with mid-60s IQs. And they vote. Don’t try that.
Because gypsies gonna gypsie.
Well one of the nomads from Brooklyn turned out OK.
Ah, yes. Californians – The Scourge of the West. And Texans – generally nice folks, but poor drivers. We’re all beset by refugees, and will have to adapt, perhaps by becoming refugees ourselves. Americans have a long history of moving on to the next territory when where they moved to gets too crowded. I’m just wondering why the places “they” all move from haven’t been totally depopulated by now.