patrick.net

One option would be to buy a lot and drag a house from some dieing non boom town a couple hundred miles away onto it. You might be very surprised at how well this can work financially sometimes. Sometimes it's just not possible. House movers know the business inside and out, give some a call. I almost went this route in Oregon, but things fell through at the last minute and a great deal came along on a regular house.

Why would you use a 30 year mortgage to purchase something you will only use for 2 years?

Why would you use a 30 year mortgage to buy something in a place thats gonna be a ghost town in 10-20 years?

If life sucks and is miserable, throwing money at it(even if it's someone else's money...and *ahem* realturds.....take note of exactly how easy it is to toss around money when its not one's own) will not make it better.

Hey! we can see your house from space! http://members.beforeitsnews.com/story/1387/074/NL/

I'd go buy a trailer / mobile home / RV and find a place to park it. Buying a house now is buying at the peak, and you already know the area will be dead in 20 years giving you no resale value.

Vaticanus says

By the way, they are predicting that this oil boom will last at least 10 years, but more likely 20 or more. They can't build housing fast enough here. But what happens when or if the boom busts for some reason?

It really depends on what your long term plans are. Do you want to live in your Boomtown, ND for the next ten years or are you looking to save as much money as possible over the course of a few years then move to a much more desireable are of the Country? If your only plan to live in North Dakota a few years, investing in a house might not be a bad investment in the short run. However in the long run housing is a lousy investment.

Why? Building will continue just like it did all over the county during the 2004/2005 housing bubble. At some point the Oil companies will have all the workers they need and will not be hiring more. They will continue building houses, even when there isn't enough people with well paying jobs to afford them. (and once that happens, wages for other employees will fall). Housing prices will collapse just like them did nationwide over the last few years. Too many houses, not enough buyers. (or renters for housing investors). It really doesn't matter that the currently oil boom continues for 10 or even 20 years. The market will reach a saturation level sooner or later regardless of how much oil companies need workers or how much people are making a year.

So if you buy a house, make sure you get rid of it within 3 or 4 years at the most, before the housing market begins to collapse.

dodgerfanjohn says

Why would you use a 30 year mortgage to purchase something you will only use for 2 years?

Why would you use a 30 year mortgage to buy something in a place thats gonna be a ghost town in 10-20 years?

Your under no obligation to live in a house 30 years. You just need enough to pay off your mortgage to move. It's my understanding Vaticanus currently lives in a slum, he would like to live in something halfway decent, considering they are going to be there for several years. Just because it's more economical to rent, doesn't mean they have to live in a slum for the next few years. Even if they only break even, or even lose 10k when selling there house when they are ready to move, it's it better to be happy where your living for two years, instead of hating where you live. After all he certainly making a good living right now, he doesn't need to be like one of those people I see on TV, living in a camper in a Walmart parking lot, just because it's cheaper.

I would however caution Vaticanus, that it's going to very difficult to give up there high paying jobs to move to another area of the county paying a lot less. Even though he and his Wife's jobs are not directly related to the oil industry, I highly suspect that they only reason they are making such good money is other businesses have been forced to pay better wages to keep there employees from leaving and going to work for the oil companies. Even minimum wage fast food workers are making $15 a hour right now.(that's more then double the federal Minimum wage of $7.25 a hour).

StoutFiles says

I'd go buy a trailer / mobile home / RV and find a place to park it. Buying a house now is buying at the peak, and you already know the area will be dead in 20 years giving you no resale value.

This area is no were near peak. I think it will not peak for another 3 or 4 years. More workers are moving into the area every day, despite all the high rents, they are only going to get higher. If you have a chance to buy now, I say buy it. As for the RV idea, great idea, but park it were? You need Electricity, Water, Sewer, Gas, Telephone, Cable hook ups, where you going to find that. Sure you can be off the gird, have a Generator, Propane heat, Cell phones, Antenna TV, empty your sewage tanks and refill water every few days. But that's brutal living, Average temperature from November to March is under 20 degrees, and it gets down to -15 at night from December to February.

StoutFiles says

I'd go buy a trailer / mobile home / RV and find a place to park it. Buying a house now is buying at the peak, and you already know the area will be dead in 20 years giving you no resale value.

I second this idea. Get a nice RV with all the amenities of a nice house. Find a decent RV park, or see if someone will let you park it on their land for a small monthly fee.

Enjoy life.

THEN !

Drive RV to Costa Rica. Relax.

joshuatrio says

Find a decent RV park

50 buck says there a shortage of RV park availability. What few RV parks there were have been snapped up long ago. As for parking on someone land, see above comment about off grid living.

Yes I recently read something about this area and that the RVs are all parked at Wal-Mart. That's not a reasonable way to live for 3-4 years, and the reason people are living in them now is that they can't find an apartment at any price. They can't build them fast enough for the number of people pouring in to work there.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/21/pf/america_boomtown_housing/index.htm

Vaticanus says

Just moved to an oil boomtown in ND. Rents here have skyrocketed from around $400 a month for a nice 3 bedroom apartment to around $2000 a month for the same over the past few years. Of course during the same time real estate prices have done the same, especially at the lower end of the price spectrum.

You have to be careful. Buying houses in towns like this during boomtime can be very problematic. It can even happen in very big cities on occasion. Just ask someone who purchased in Houston in 1981 or 1982. The price didn't come back on a nominal basis until 1997. On a real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) basis, Houston prices are probably not even back to par yet because inflation has been almost 135% since 1982 according to CPI:

http://www.housingbubblebust.com/OFHEO/Major/Texas.html

And that's even in a big city with a liquid housing market and with a more diversified job market than a small town. In a small town, the effects of a boom like this are amplified because there's no other industry in town.

Another great example is some of the mining towns in Australia. I remember reading about one town where the price went from A$80,000 to A$800,000 in a very short time.

These things don't last. Don't get caught holding the bag if you decide to do this.

Techgromit you seem to have a pretty good handle on the situation. I appreciate everyone's input.

As for the trailer idea, I wish I could buy a trailer for a decent price. There are no used ones available, new ones cost 90,000 or more, and then the lot rent is around 700 a month. Seems like a good way to lose about 50 thousand dollars quick. Resale on trailers is horrible.

I grew up in a mobile home, and it isn't so bad, but even those are horrendously overpriced out here.

Living in an RV, in the middle of winter? Uh, have you ever been to ND in January? That might work in cali but no here in the tundra. There are plenty of people doing it, and yes they are insane.

I believe that prices are not going to peak for a few years just like others here have said.

Nomo, I hope you enjoy the benefits of ND oil. and no the ditch is not on fire, there is just no mechanism to harvest the natural gas that all these wells are producing. We'd be happy to have a wise a$$ like you come inspect them for us.

In your case, I recommend not to buy but rent a better place. If you look hard, it's there. It simply don't make sense and commit yourself to a mortgage when you may leave in 2 years.

Can you live outside the area ? And commute in ?

Vaticanus says

As for the trailer idea, I wish I could buy a trailer for a decent price. There are no used ones available, new ones cost 90,000 or more

Don't you really mean to add locally since I'm guessing that you could buy a used trailer elsewhere and have it shipped in???? Did you look into that?

Vaticanus says

As for the trailer idea, I wish I could buy a trailer for a decent price. There are no used ones available, new ones cost 90,000 or more, and then the lot rent is around 700 a month. Seems like a good way to lose about 50 thousand dollars quick. Resale on trailers is horrible.

Trailers are also called MOBILE homes. They can be moved from other area's. Rv's can be driven. There are thousands maybe even 10's of thousands sitting around, many are at bargain prices, many a lot bigger and a lot, lot nicer than some apartments I've rented. Sure you can live in an RV in cold weather, most have more than adequate heating and insulation. It's not hard to check out before you buy.

Sounds like you just want to talk about the problem.

Actually this sounds like a fantastic OPPORTUNITY for someone with some capital, set up an RV park really fast and buy a bunch of them and also some mobile homes and start trucking them in.

Since this is a boomtown, better jump on this before someone else does, because in a year, there will be plenty of competition.