Category: Retreat Locales

Today we are featuring Northwest Arkansas. One of our readers Jaina B. highly recommended our newest SurvivalBlog Realtor, Jeff Allen. Congratulations Jeff! Some of his listings may soon be featured on SurvivalRealty.com. The following is a review of the area written by Mr. Allen: Welcome to Northwest Arkansas! The market in Northwest Arkansas is surviving the downturn very well. Land prices in rural areas are holding very steady on the very few sales that are taking place. The housing market has been overbuilt and we have 8-10 months of inventory to work through before things can look more “optimistic.” I …

This week in our weekly review of Survival Real Estate, I’d like to mention that we are in need of your help. We need you, the SurvivalBlog supporter that lives in any retreat locale in the world, to refer us to your local agent that understands what survival real estate shoppers are looking for. We have North Idaho and Northwest Montana covered but we need to locate and contact trusted agents elsewhere in the US and world-wide, so they may be featured in the weekly reviews in SurvivalBlog, and on our spin-off site: SurvivalRealty.com. If you have a friend or …

JWR: Important consideration on Colville. It is near a very large Indian Reservation (Colville Tribe) and while there is a considerable amount of private property within it’s boundary, you have no hunting rights there. The First People are friendly, but distrustful of outsiders and in a SHTF scenario, would likely view you and yours as fair game. Unless you are a tribal member, buy outside the reservation. I was near to closing a deal on a very nice property [inside the reservation] when another agent took me aside. – EAG Hello Jim, I have been reading your daily letters, comments …

Today we will be reviewing Colville, Washington as a possible retreat location. The city of Colville (population 5,000) is located about an hour and a half drive north of Spokane Washington (Pop. 200,000) and lies within Stevens County (Pop. 45,000). From many personal visits to the city and surrounding towns during my retreat search I can say that the Colville and surrounding area came a close second to our current locale of Northern Idaho. In 1811, the valley was explored by a man working for a fur trading company working the Columbia River. During the first year of operation nearly …

Thanks to all of you for your patience as I dealt with some important family issues, several visiting SurvivalBlog real estate clients, and the opening of Idaho’s Deer and Elk season, all in the past two weeks. Sometimes there is no such thing as the slower-paced life at a higher altitude! Well the financial news these days just keeps getting darker and for those of you who are actively searching for your retreat, just press on, you’ll make it. As we get back into reviewing actual retreat locales (next week) it’s important to have a solid standard operating procedure (SOP). …

Run and Hide, Walk and Talk I hear it all the time from clients, the magical question of “where can I buy a property that will allow me to hide-away from it all and not be noticed”. My answer is simple. If you want to really ‘hide’ from the powers that may or may not be, live in the biggest city you can find in a flat across from the nearest public transportation system, period. If you think that moving to a small town will give you that wanted anonymity, you’re wrong. In a small rural town and setting most …

Greetings Jim, Here is a link for gathering statistical intelligence on an area one may want to relocate to for a retreat or to use to plot an escape route. This site gives a quick thumbnail reference of demographics, economic and social indicators etc. for further research or to locate areas to avoid that you may not be familiar with. Plug in the ZIP code for the area of interest and you will get information on the area as well as adjacent area ZIP codes along with an additional tool to compare up to twenty other ZIP codes of your …

Realities and Compromises While Retreat Shopping Over the summer I was blessed to meet a lot of fellow SurvivalBlog readers here in north Idaho. Most, if not all, made several drastic changes to their retreat shopping list either during or right after their trip here. Most notably, the changes made most often were: Distance to a sizeable town/economic base, the parcel size (acres), and access to the parcel. It’s important to realize that once you take in the enormity of the locale you have chosen to relocate to that these factors become the number one issue in a search. There …