This weekly column features news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. We also mention companies of interest to preppers and survivalists that are located in the American Redoubt region. Today, we focus on the recent record-breaking real estate sales in The American Redoubt and in other rural regions.
Region-Wide
Initiative to expand Idaho into Oregon could be on November ballot
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Intense competition drives a surge in offers on unseen homes. This atricle begins:
“With a low inventory and coronavirus limiting accessibility, nearly half of home shoppers made offers sight-unseen in June, according to Redfin.
In a survey conducted last month, 45% of consumers who purchased a home in the last year put bids on houses without physically seeing them. It’s the highest share since Redfin started tracking the data in 2015. Only 28% of buyers made these offers a year ago.”
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More Space, Please: Home Sales Booming Despite Pandemic, Recession
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The liberal Lewiston Tribune published this very slanted hit piece on August 24th: GOP leaders in Idaho have ties to extremist movement
Idaho
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At Redoubt News: The Sandpoint Mayor Should Resign
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Anti-government activist Bundy arrested at Idaho Statehouse
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Bigger, heavier loads allowed on U.S. Highway 95 after road improvements
Montana
The heat is on in Butte: Homes selling at record pace. Here are the opening paragraphs of this fairly lengthy article in The Montana Standard:
“Well — the heat is on and not just because it’s the dog days of summer.Montana real estate is a hot commodity.From east to west, north to south, homes and land are, more often than not, sold within days.
Butte realtors are feeling the heat, too, and working fast and furiously.
For Gary Shea, broker/owner of CENTURY 21 Shea Realty, it is the busiest he has seen the market in his 23-year career.
“Every Montana market is on fire,” Shea said. “There’s a lot of demand out there — with local, in-state and out-of-state.”
Denise Kelly, broker/owner of RE/MAX Premier, concurs.
“It’s been insane — a house comes on the market and there are multiple offers in just a couple of days,” Kelly said.
The same can be said for land.
“Land is flying off the market,” said Kelly, who explained that many of the buyers are from Butte trying to prevent out-of-staters from buying it up.
Realtor.com reported the market is doing so well that this past July in Butte, there were “roughly more buyers than active homes for sale.”
According to both Shea and Kelly, the two main reasons for the upswing is the pandemic and the current social unrest.
While a definite sign of the current times, Shea also credits technology, which has allowed people to live in one area while working from another.
“People want to get out of the bigger cities,” Shea said, “and have been choosing more rural areas.”
In this all-too-surprising turn of events, Kelly is also amazed at how many people seeking homes buy the property sight unseen.
She noted that this almost unheard of trend has forced the Montana Association of Realtors’ legal department to develop a “sight-unseen” form in order to protect the realtors.”
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Montana Drone Technology Company Acquired for $350 Million. The best part of this news is that they don’t plan to move the company.
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Solar-power developers win Montana Supreme Court decision
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Death of a former police chief: Great Falls drowning victim identified
Eastern Oregon
Bend Real Estate Sales Were Exceptional in July 2020
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Flags to be flown at half-staff to honor fallen Oregon Marines
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Prineville Airport plane crash kills Redmond pilot
Eastern Washington
No charges for Yakima woman in husband’s shooting death
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Just 1 Tri-Cities COVID death last week. But virus on track statewide to be a top-5 killer
Wyoming
Lawmakers advance bills to help agribusinesses, meat processing facilities
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Suspect found sleeping; accused of stealing two vehicles, handgun
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Four wolves taken from Dell Creek Pack
Send Your News Tips
Please send your American Redoubt region news tips and event announcements to JWR. You can do so either via e-mail or via our Contact form.
Montana Housing and reality. I talked to a contractor from Bozeman recently and he was telling me that the two years leading up this year had been busy, but this year has been crazy for building new housing. People are moving in from the west coast, with most of them coming from Calif and he said they have some really goofy ideas about buildings, life and how things should be run.
Oh and another thing, I’ve stopped at the Sioux Falls SD Costco store two or three times looking for your book and they still don’t have it, but the Barnes and Noble book store will have it in or by the middle of October
Intense competition drives a surge in offers on unseen homes…..We experienced this firsthand. We wanted to get out of the Phoenix area and back home to Spokane and had seen houses that we wanted to walk through get snapped up with multiple offers the first day. Finally a house in our old neighborhood came up for sale and luckily we knew the owners and how they took care of it. So sight unseen we bid over asking price on the same day as it posted. They accepted our offer and we are now sitting in our new house. It is an intense market for homes in the Redoubt and I strongly suggest if you want to get out of liberal areas that you do it now.
Malheur Co OREGON 3/2 clean move in ready 1990’s mfg, pit set, on 2.5 acres, well, septic, irrigation canal at back end of site, on hwy surrounded by dairy, potato, wheat, onions, cattle and hay farms, 8 miles to town. Direct line of sight to transmission towers over in clay peak. my relative putting it on market will be asking 150K. I think that’s way too low, any suggestions? Realtors here are “old boys club” and will pack together to defraud you.
Cheese-maybe contact JWR’s #1 son at survivalrealty.com and see if he can help them? I’m on the opposite coast but it sounds low to me.
Picked up my copy of JWR’s book at Costco in Phoenix. Big display of them.
Wouldn’t be awesome if so many of these liberals moved out of lefty states like mine into the West and we could return the formerly great state of New York to it’s people? I mean, it would suck for you guys but I’d be happy lol.
“The liberal Lewiston Tribune published this very slanted hit piece on August 24th: GOP leaders in Idaho have ties to extremist movement”
So let me get this straight. BLM and AntiFA are not extremist movements, but the 3% and Oath Keepers are? Huh!? 3% folks are all of a sudden a militia movement. Oath Keepers are folks that generally at one time took an oath of office, police, military, etc, live up to that oath, and now that too is a militia movement. But BLM and AnitFA are just wonderful peaceful folks quietly expressing their opinion. Really, I’m so impressed by the “peaceful” nature of their “protests”.
If you take this article, replace the “right wing militia groups” with BLM and AnitFA and it makes more sense. Then replace the “right wing” Republicans with the names of “progressive” Democrats, and the message makes more sense and becomes eminently clear. And I notice, that the SPLC never ever equates BLM or AntiFA with any form of radical extremism or labels them as the hate groups that they are. Go figure. Welcome to the USSA!
Real estate in our part of rural Arkansas is seeing the same rush. Homes with Small acreage are selling in a week. A friend that moved here recently, not looking to sell his place was contacted by a realtor that said he could sell his 27 acres with creek, shop and barn for 4 Xs what he purchased it for…