Homes For Sale In Montana

Where can you find cheap housing for sale? Add "that are also in a beautiful city 'and that was the question that we try to respond when my wife and I take the road in 2002. Out of Michigan in early April, we tested the cities of New Mexico and Arizona to California and Washington State, arriving in Montana in late May was a Sunday morning when we arrived in the town of Anaconda, a real estate guide in hand, which promised a beautiful little pink house for only $ 18,900.

In Anaconda you can fly fish downtown, go to the movies for four dollars a theater in beautiful art-deco former, drop some nickels in a slot machine in casinos dozen dining in a restaurant find worth of beer in bars, and buy a house for less than $ 30,000 - all within a few blocks from downtown! The library had internet service decent, and there was the fauna (including bears) a few hundred meters from the main street at certain times.

Mount Haggin, at 10,700 feet, offers an ideal setting for the city, even dressing up as white as snow or hail on several occasions during July. In the meadows above the tree line flowers are abundant in midsummer, and the value of intense hike / climb. Anaconda itself is at 5,280 feet - mile-high city Montana, surrounded by mountains, lakes and streams.

The first thing Monday morning we found a realtor and looked at several houses at the price of $ 13,000 to $ 30,000 or more. The one in the guide was that we wanted. It had two bedrooms, hardwood floors, a solarium, and partially finished basement. If it had been empty for some time, like many houses in the city were he was ready to live, and the piles of garage door were still active.

We usually try less than the asking price, and our offer of $ 17,500 was accepted. The closing was set for June, and we returned to Michigan to be packaged. We came a morning when the frost gave way to a day of 80 degrees (mountain weather is crazy this way). The house needed repair, but when we did even less than $ 20,000 total in it, and it was nice to be able to pay cash for everything.

There are reasons why real estate is so cheap in some places. In Anaconda is because in 1980 the smelter closed without warning, which eliminates most jobs in the city. House prices proceeded to drop over 20 years from this time. In 2002, we did not our business, and I did not like the two jobs I worked at all, we lived there, so we sold the house five months later. We received $ 28,000 for it.

We returned for a visit in 2007. The city has been discovered, which is good news in many respects. With a ski station fifteen miles away, a Jack Nicklaus golf course a few blocks from Main Street, Georgetown Lake and surroundings in general population may be increasing for the first time in many years. The houses are fixed up, there is a new brewery and other new businesses.

And the bad news? You can not find decent housing for under $ 30,000 or even $ 60,000 in Anaconda. In fact, our little pink house would probably sell for $ 85,000 or more. Maybe we sold too early ...

A lesson here is that if you have a business you can move with you (as we do now, and we live in a mountain town in Colorado), you can find cheap houses in large cities . Just find a place as beautiful as it had little economic difficulties for some time. These are great places to retire to as well, and $ 120,000 would still buy a very nice house in Anaconda and other cities such.