Land Ho!

I've been talking with my friend John from Shelter Architecture about how now is a good time to build your dream home in the city.

Here's why -- it's really hard to find a lot in the city. However, the glut of cheap foreclosures could allow someone to tear down an existing house to build a new house. With houses selling for as little as $7,000 in the metro, it's a good time to jump on this. And yes, there are foreclosures in all neighborhoods -- from Bald Eagle Lake and North Oaks to Kenwood and Crocus Hill.

Financing is tight right now, but I think this is a nice opportunity time for a lot of people.


It's also a good time to take a shell of a house and turn it into something new.

Vacation Realty

So I was in Montana over the weekend. Not a vacation, but a grandma's funeral.

On our non-funeral day, we went to Red Lodge, a cutesy ski town not far from Yellowstone. There were 4 or 5 brokerages in the little downtown, all featuring the listed properties on color copies in the front windows.

It's funny -- vacation property always seems so much like home, and so much not like home.

Cute 1 bedroom bungalow in a good location? $179,900! Just like the swanky neighborhoods here!

Overdone, new construction, too many finished square feet for anyone other than a family of ten -- $799,900! Just like here!

616 acres of open land -- $189,900!

Hold the freaking phone! Over 600 acres??? Here, good open land goes for much, much, much more. A quick search of the MLS for parcels in excess of 600 acres brings me listings well above a million dollars. The climate in Montana is very arid, and I would imagine the 616 acres is only good for grazing land.

But I do have this fantasy of buying up a lot of vacant land. They aren't making any more of it, you know.