Mom's bottom line was $294,900, listed the house for $299,000, and received an offer of $310,000. After being on the market for less than a week, the house closed today.

Jeanette Isabelle

Nice! It's a seller's market for sure right now. I've never been to Texas and have no idea what the market is like there. In my home town of Sioux Falls, SD $300k would buy a pretty darned nice house. But here in Bozeman, MT a dog house costs $300k!

Nothing is decided yet, but there's a new housing development in Navasota, Tx. We like the neighborhood, and the real estate development company has a floor plan that fits our needs for $250,000, give or take a few hundred dollars.

The following will give you an idea of what we may get, even though we may not get this specific unit.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhom...8_P417000634363

Jeanette Isabelle

Its crazy around here too. We moved in 2007 and got into a "starter" house at 169k. Was a big jump from our 60k house in 1995

Sounds good! I'm kind of addicted to living in the West but if the soaring COL and housing prices force me out eventually I will probably move back to Minnesota.

Must be something good in Minnesota. A lot of immigrants from Finland ended up in Minnesota.

Minnesota is actually pretty great. I wanted to be up in the mountains but to be honest, in a way they kind of suck. Great for four or five months but inaccessible the rest of the year. It's hard to beat northern Minnesota. Montana is great but MN is a lot cheaper!

Just curious

It is understandable to investigate cost of living and job markets when you choose an area to move to, but haven't seen anyone thinking of disasters. Isn't it a factor? If I was choosing a place to live in the U.S. I'll look at a map of natural disasters first. Harsh weather is a close second.

Are you talking about Texas or Minnesota? Every place has upsides and downsides. Both can get storms; in MN it's generally blizzards while TX can get tornadoes and depending on the which part of the state, hurricanes. I guess TX has had a few blizzards the last 20 years and they're utterly unprepared when it does happen. On a personal level though a person could make sure they prepare their own household.

In Montana or Minnesota, as climate change progresses wildfire is a bigger and bigger problem. Not all of MN or MT is forested but you have to have a plan if you do live in an area in or bordering on a forest. The last fire season was brutal (to be fair, there kind of isn't even a season for fire any more- it's a year round problem). Luckily Bozeman, while surrounded by forests, is in a kind of large circular clearing where there's no real danger of wild fire. But when I lived in Idaho I could walk out of my yard and right into the woods!

Most of what we get in Texas are tornadoes and hail.

In 2010, when we were still in Texas, I experienced my first blizzard. In the nearly eight years Mom and I have lived in Florida, I hear that Texas has experienced more of them.

As for hurricanes, Navasota is far enough from the coast that all we will get is wind.

If Huston (the nearest major city) gets hit by a nuke, we'll be far enough away where we'll be safe.

Jeanette Isabelle