[knrstz]

Hello,

I live over in northwest Arkansas. Thanks to the current housing market and Walmart building a new headquarters across the street from where I live, my house as more than doubled in value. Although I love it here, the idea of selling out a moving to a smaller town that is very pretty has its appeal to me. My wife and I both work from home and would love to find a small house around 1200 square feet in a nice secluded area. However we need high speed internet for work. This is non negotiable. Around 200k would allow us to buy outright with cash. We don’t need anything fancy. It’s just the two of us and two whippets. I’ve driven through poteau but don’t know much about it. We aren’t looking for fancy culture and high end restaurants. We just want a nice small town that we can get our basic needs and live cheap while we travel. Is this doable? Anything we should know about the area? Thanks.

[Futuremauian]

Two of my relatives served as mayor of Poteau. Did that help?

[eddie gein]

Poteau is nice if you are a blue collar type of individual and have those type of interests. If not, prepare to spend a lot of time going Ft. Smith, Fayetteville and Tulsa for things to do and places to eat. But as far as blue collar towns in Oklahoma go... it's probably one of the better ones. I'm not sure there will be a lot of housing stock available that is that size of home that would be Bentonville quality. There are some nice houses in Poteau but they are usually bigger than 1200 feet.

[recycled]

I'll tell you one thing about Poteau, as someone who has visited there - it is a very scenic place, surrounding by terrain that defies the stereotype of Oklahoma (as in flat open plains). Poteau is on the western side of the Ouachita Mountains, that run east-west from Arkansas. Most visitors stop in Poteau before heading over the Talimena Scenic Drive that goes to Mena, AR. Poteau has a mini-mountain of its own just to the west called Cavanal Hill - there is a winding road to the top that offers a fantastic view point. Highway 259 that goes south to Big Cedar and Broken Bow is also another scenic treat.

If you live in the Poteau town limits, Cox Communications offers cable & high speed internet (up to 1GB available) there. They are one of the best high speed internet providers in the US - I currently have their lowest price internet (50 MB for $30 per month) here in Tucson and it is fine for my needs (watch netflix and daily internet access). Never had an outage. Fiber terminates in a closet on the side of my apartment, with just a short coax cable direct to my own cable modem.

[knrstz]

Originally Posted by eddie gein

Poteau is nice if you are a blue collar type of individual and have those type of interests. If not, prepare to spend a lot of time going Ft. Smith, Fayetteville and Tulsa for things to do and places to eat. But as far as blue collar towns in Oklahoma go... it's probably one of the better ones. I'm not sure there will be a lot of housing stock available that is that size of home that would be Bentonville quality. There are some nice houses in Poteau but they are usually bigger than 1200 feet.

The housing market overall looks pretty slim from what I’ve seen the last few months. Thanks for all of the responses.