Road trip to Northern ID to find and buy a home next week. (for sale, hotels)

[nm9stheham]

Originally Posted by banjomike

I also wonder if other states are seeing a lot of immigration this month.

This is absolutely happening everywhere, BJM. We have been looking in ID, MT and WY for a few years and properties are 'flying off the shelves' in each market we have picked to track. The only one that is even a bit slow is Seeley Lake Mt, but even that market is 'active' relative to where it was. Exact same thing in Maine is going on, and also on the Outer Banks of NC. Just had a friend of a friend from the Wash DC area move 80 miles out of northern VA to get away from that dense suburban hubbub.

There has to be close to 100 million households in the USA so it just takes a few % of people deciding they've had enough to move and create a big mini-migration like this.

There is quite a lot of overpriced property that has popped out there in the last month or so, so be careful, shoppers.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

I have a suggestion, if you are really wanting to buy real estate in North Idaho.


Make yourself a list of must-haves, nice to haves, and can't tolerates. If you find any property in your price range with most of your must haves and none of your can't tolerates, sit down and make an offer right on the spot. If you take a couple of days to shop around, it might be gone before you can make an offer.


Be resigned that you will have to later add some of your "nice to haves" to whatever you buy.



There is not a lot of real estate on the market and of the property that is actually listed, not much of it is a desirable property. You can find a house overlooking a busy railroad, if you don't mind a lot of noise, but for me, that goes on the "can't tolerate" list. So the number of listings for me would be reduced by the number of houses sitting next to the rail lines. Take out a few "can't tolerates" and there is precious little to look at.

[redwood66]

Originally Posted by luvmyveteran

Redwood66, I contacted the Walkers at The Hemlocks, JW said they are open, but have closed the kitchen until next spring.
We talked for awhile, he told me the campground is staying full with people from Calif, WA, and OR looking to buy! We've been watching the market for months, still is disheartening to hear.

We left Calif for a reason, took OR and WA off our lists of places to retire to back in 04 for the same reason everyone is leaving now.
JW said they are scared of the riots, and liberal governments, and are buying everything up they can find.
Hope they leave that crap where ever they arrive from.

Argh, gonna kick ourselves for not coming out there last September!
Thanks again for the referral, they have room for us, but said they have been full most of the time.

He also mentioned another park, Twin feathers I think? Says they closed and may not reopen, I think he told me it was near a casino?

You're welcome. I don't know Twin Feathers but if it's by the casino in Bonners Ferry then it's right in town on the river.

That owner of the Hemlocks is new and I didn't know that when I recommended it. I called him the other day to see about a room in the motel for next week and his prices have gone up quite a bit from the previous owner. He seems to have an issue with the long termers in the park spaces too just by his offhand comments. We had considered staying long term there before if we sold our place in PF but I probably wouldn't now. I liked the previous owners very much but don't really know much about him. It is a nice place but pretty far from BF and near the MT border.

[luvmyveteran]

oregonwoodsmoke, that is just what we have had to do the past few weeks if I don't want to list our home here.

That odd phrase, "can't have your cake and eat it too" popped into my head, but why make a cake if you can't eat it??
I don't feel greedy wanting to keep our current home, we originally looked at ID properties as just a vacation/second home to escape the heat part of the year, never thinking we'd have to sell just to get in a clunker.

RR tracks are a absolute no go, so are parks, business's next door.
On our last trip to ID we stayed overnight where the RR noise was unreal, even when I knew a train was coming, it was awful, and not something I could tolerate, nor ever get used to.

We don't want to buy at the top of any market, especially when I have had to whittle my list down to the point there are few to no "wants", and very few needs to be found.

I called off leaving today as I felt deflated by the idea of taking a 2200 mile road trip round trip, spending the cash that it would take just to come home empty handed.
If these were normal times I would see it as a vacation, but with everything going on in our country,
the shutdowns, anarchists, ect, this isn't the time I would plan a vacation that far from my sanctuary.

The motorhome is all packed up other than some last minute fridge foods, ect, so am thinking it might be a good idea to NOT look at listings when I wake up like I did this morning, and just go for it, lol

[redwood66]

RRs are a fact of life up here and can be terrible. I've posted this before but here is the Federal Railroad Administration map with crossings. Zoom into where you want to look and the railroad xings will show up as dots. Click on the dots to see how many trains per day on that line. BNSF and UP mainlines have dozens per day. Click INV_LINK for the actual pdf with all the info.

https://fragis.fra.dot.gov/GISFRASafety/

[oldafretired]

The trains sure are loud. I'm about 7 miles from the tracks that run through Athol and I can still hear the trains go by. There are two sets of tracks in Athol close to each other and there are buildings between them. I don't see how you could live with trains going by on both sides of your house.

Hope you get to make your trip up here. The weather has been nice and cool the last few days and the usual bugs like yellow jackets and mosquitos seem few in number this summer near Spirit Lake. Every summer is different when it comes to bugs. Oh, and the number of Wuhan cases seem to be on the decline. Hopefully that will continue.

[luvmyveteran]

Redwood66, Thank you for that link!
I was just telling my husband yesterday that I had seen a post with that info in it awhile back,
but couldn't recall which thread or who shared it.

The discussion of train noise reminds me of an elderly neighbor down the road who was sad when we sold our entire flock of chickens last year when we thought we would move.
She said she really missed hearing the Rooster's crowing in the morning as it was a childhood memory.
It's ok to hear noise off in the distance, it may even be charming, but not when it's in your backyard
or next door, lol

Right now we have way too many Roo's, we started raising broilers for canning/ freezers years ago, but it has been way too hot to process them, so
I spent 2 days last week building a new pen by the goat barn to minimize the racket.
The guinea hens who make constant noise got parked back there also, lol.

Apologies for whining a bit here yesterday, was venting frustration over so many people looking
for properties all of a sudden, while we've been planning it for a few years.
Guess I felt we should have first dibs, haha.

We will be leaving for NID today, not going to let a pandemic, crazy housing market, or anarchists stop me.
Life kept happening, so we put off our buying trip the last 2 yrs, and now the world has gone slap crazy.

Thank you all for your replies, I will try not to drive ya crazy with questions when we start looking at areas, but I trust the strangers in this forum to give us their honest thoughts over a realtor wanting to make a sale.

Not a slam against realtors, we have them in our family,
we just know they put a spin on things at times.

[luvmyveteran]

Oldafretired
We have looked around Spirit Lake and Athol,
so many beautiful areas to choose from, y'all are blessed to live in NID.

We have only seen 2! mosquito's this summer, even near the pond. We bought some Spartan Mosquito to try and although I have seen a negative review, they have worked great for us and especially for friends who live waterfront near the Delta where the bugs are big enough to carry people off.

They suggested we try them as they worked so well for them that for the first time in 20 yrs they could sit outside without being inside a netted enclosure.

We raise guineas who help keep the other bugs at bay, they love ticks, they kill venomous snakes,
but leave the others alone. We generally only keep 1-3 guinea hens as they are the noisemakers
who give guineas a bad name.
There is a heat advisory for temps/heat index of 110 today (and most likely until December),
it's not the heat, it's the humidity, and that is the truth, lol
Can't wait to escape once our grandson gets here to farm sit.

[mrunik]

Are the borders in the states you cross to get to Idaho from N. California open without a 14 day quarantine?

[luvmyveteran]

mrunik, am not sure if you are asking me as we are crossing numerous states coming from MS.
I suggest calling the State Troopers offices in the States you will be traveling through, but
my husband called a couple state troopers offices to ask about that issue, and also if they knew of any upcoming anarchist plans along our route.
No one seemed to know anything, pretty crazy really.
He also asked what our legal rights to respond if caught up or threatened in road blocks by the criminals, if they get violent, and they had no idea.
Not a shock as many of the Leo's hands are tied too. Pretty disgusting this is allowed to go on.

The only state I have read that was stopping people at the state line was Utah back in May I think, but no idea if they are still doing that, we changed our route to take I-90 to get out of the dang heat.