Moving to Montana or Wyoming

[ben h]

I saw this infographic the other day which puts house pricing into a different perspective. These numbers seem crazy to me in that they're not the amount you need to make to be doing good, but rather how much you need to make to barely be able to comfortably afford a three bedroom home, assuming you're starting fresh without a huge down payment from the sale of another home or other sources.

 

[kpk]

I've debated this several times the past few years. Seems to me most of the people currently moving to WY or MT are already wealthy. I'm sure my wife would still be able to get a good job, but for me, I would take a huge pay cut and then it would be hard to keep up with the cost of living out there.

Salt Lake City is another place I've looked at (although it's often not spoken of highly on here either). Pretty centrally located to tons of outdoor oppurtunities.

 

[grfox92]

All the best towns are in Wyoming. I would definitely just go there.

False. All the best towns are in Montana. Wyoming is terrible and should be avoided at all costs.

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[Robster]

False. All the best towns are in Montana. Wyoming is terrible and should be avoided at all costs.

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Nope, don't listen to him. Wyoming is the best!!

Seriously. You better be rich if you want to move to the Flathead Valley. All the affordable houses(which are not affordable) are being purchased by out of staters to become their second home. (Texans, Californians...) A run down shack that needs to be torn down and rebuilt will cost you around 500K

 

[grfox92]

As someone who packed his family of 4 , now 6, and moved from NY to WY I'll give you some advice.

You need to spend alot of time in these areas before tou move to them. People visit Yellowstone through Cody to the tune of over 1 million a year. Those people fall in love with July in Cody and think they want to live there. Then they sell their expensive house in CA or NY or thr PNW and move. Then 1 year later they leave and go somewhere else.

These places aren't what they seem when you visit and living there is very different.

Outside of the towns and cities in Wyoming that are populated and have amenities the smaller towns are isolated and lonely with nothing to do.

I live in one of the disreable towns in WY. My 7 year old daughter asked a question the other day. "Mom, if someone was visiting (our town) Wyoming and had never been here before, what would they do for fun?" My wife couldn't answer the question.

The wind, the cold, the winter, makes people flee. Youndont experience those things in their full affect until you live here. Many can hack it, many cant.

If we want to have a fun 3 day weekend outside of camping and hiking (which eventually get old) we have to travel to billings for trampoline parks, the mall, Scheels ect..

Sometimes its very difficult living here. Alot of the guys who grew up here look to leave and move later in life, not all but a lot.

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[grfox92]

Nope, don't listen to him. Wyoming is the best!!

Seriously. You better be rich if you want to move to the Flathead Valley. All the affordable houses(which are not affordable) are being purchased by out of staters to become their second home. (Texans, Californians...) A run down shack that needs to be torn down and rebuilt will cost you around 500K

Mortgage broker i was just having a conversation with told me almost 70% of homes in northwest wyoming are being purchased in cash or with an 80% down payment.

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[Preston]

Its super expensive to move to either Montana or Wyoming and afford to buy a home and scratch out a living. The average home price in Montana is $652k across the entire state. Way more if you want to live in the western 1/3 (mountains)

 

[ReaptheHeat]

WY is extremely expensive for what you get. It's not even just the stuff in NW WY by Yellowstone.

Does the property have water rights or a well? Is there topography to break up wind and drifts? Trees?

 

[grfox92]

WY is extremely expensive for what you get. It's not even just the stuff in NW WY by Yellowstone.

Does the property have water rights or a well? Is there topography to break up wind and drifts? Trees?

Snow drifts is another thing. You wont know until you get through a couple of winters if you need a Skid Steer or not. Some spots will always accumulate Snow drifts in the same spot based on terrain and prevailing wind.

I lived in a house I rented in Wyoming for a year, left for work one day and there was a snow drift just outside my driveway. It looked like about 6 inches to a foot deep so I put it in 4 wheel drive and sent it. That Snow drift was 4 feet deep in the middle and we had to wait until a neighbor farther up the mountain came down the next day and cleared the drift with a skidder.

Those rural roads with residential homes on them are not county roads and you ate completely on your own. So if you want to live rural, you need to budget to pay someone or own a machine.

Obviously if you live in town thats not an issue.

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[Hnthrdr]

Mortgage broker i was just having a conversation with told me almost 70% of homes in northwest wyoming are being purchased in cash or with an 80% down payment.

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Coming from Co the only area I would realistically be able to drag my family to in wyo would be Buffalo/sheridan edit Casper is pretty neat too, seems like the only place where the wind doesn’t kick your ass like the rest of the state. I like larimie/ the snowy range area a lot but people really can’t fathom how there isn’t a lot there and the jobs/ salaries don’t necessarily exist

 

[grfox92]

Coming from Co the only area I would realistically be able to drag my family to in wyo would be Buffalo/sheridan, seems like the only place where the wind doesn’t kick your ass like the rest of the state. I like larimie/ the snowy range area a lot but people really can’t fathom how there isn’t a lot there and the jobs/ salaries don’t necessarily exist

I love Buffalo. Its cool little town with a few great restaurants and Sheridan is close enough for amenities.

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[Hnthrdr]

False. All the best towns are in Montana. Wyoming is terrible and should be avoided at all costs.

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Hey transplant, here are the rules: only the people born in these places get to play the don’t move here game haha just messing

Also let’s be real, this guy would likely be a net positive for any western state, I watched my home state turn into an unrecognizable lunny bin. So I for one would rather have a boatload of conservative minded, pro small government people move in. And fyi it took 8-12 years for Co to flip and we had a population of 2.9 mil when I was born… so if my math is right Wyoming or MT could be flipped a hell of a lot faster than that, 600k heck in a year or two you guys could be in the fight of your lives with gov overreach, people are coming anyhow, I’ll take those who won’t threaten to end hunting/ consumptive lifestyle any day

 

[grfox92]

Hey transplant, here are the rules: only the people born in these places get to play the don’t move here game haha just messing

Also let’s be real, this guy would likely be a net positive for any western state, I watched my home state turn into an unrecognizable lunny bin. So I for one would rather have a boatload of conservative minded, pro small government people move in. And fyi it took 8-12 years for Co to flip and we had a population of 2.9 mil when I was born… so if my math is right Wyoming or MT could be flipped a hell of a lot faster than that, 600k heck in a year or two you guys could be in the fight of your lives with gov overreach, people are coming anyhow, I’ll take those who won’t threaten to end hunting/ consumptive lifestyle any day

I agree, and I am only half serious. Unfortunately there are way too many of the wrong minded people moving here

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[Hnthrdr]

I agree, and I am only half serious. Unfortunately there are way too many of the wrong minded people moving here

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I know it’s all tongue in cheek, I do it too… but I really really hope what happened down here to us greenies doesn’t happen up there. We need the west to stay as wild and free as possible!

 

[CorbLand]

Yep that’s a big deal. I am from frontrange co, my kids are really young and I had to mentally wrestle with this question a bunch cause my wife wants to potentially move to her home ( Prescott, Az) it would be to the mountains but different kind than what I’m used to, and we would potentially take over her families ranch, probably a few years away if we do it, but it’s a big deal. How old are your kiddos?

You want to give me a quarter acre to build on when you do?

 

[TaperPin]

My wife and I are talking of moving our family of 4 to Wyoming or Montana from Michigan. I am currently self-employed and I’m thinking of selling off my business and relocating. My Wife would be looking for a new job as well. Are there any recommendations anybody has for good towns our kids are big and into sports 4-H looking for more of a conservative feel with good church options.

Plenty of prior posts on where to live with a little searching, but it should be said you need to carefully consider locations because construction in rural towns is very different from town to town, and work is very much like salmon runs, when there’s work life is good and when it dries up there’s not a single fish in the stream.

Work on the houses of residents in city limits and you’re competing with every guy with a pickup and skillsaw who will work for dirt cheap. Much more money is in vacation homes, but it’s not as easy as just showing up. Local subs will work against you as a favor for their regular contractors. Locals won’t trust you, and many jobs have architects out of the area so courting them is not always easy. Suppliers will rent you their crappiest equipment, deliver their worst lumber, drag their feet as much as possible on concrete pour days, and over bid your jobs. Even carpenters don’t like guys who show up from the east coast and don’t adjust to the way we do things. We don’t care how you nail off trim in areas with big humidity swings, what you do for termites, or how much you like strapping ceilings prior to Sheetrock.

The guys who make it in smaller areas go to work for the best contractor in town to learn how things are done, make contacts, get to know suppliers/subs, and understand where the niche is they want to explore on their own. Without this kind of local information and starting a building business you're rowing upstream.

The other out of state small contractors that have made it seem to start very small with whatever they can get, and are very good at making friends with local architects, suppliers and subs, so even without any other local support, they get a stream of small projects from recommendations until they have enough time and local work under their belt to be taken seriously for bigger stuff.

The best carpenters that you would like to hire, aren’t interested unless you have good projects and lots of hours. Even when you have good work for the summer, the more established guys have planned for a big house to be dried in by late fall so work can be done all winter inside for the carpenters they like and have been with them all summer. Many guys are used to traveling across the state for the best paid work, so you might be in an active building area and can’t find anyone local that will swing a hammer for you, or know for a fact a large number of carpenters live in an area and can’t get any of them to call you back.

As the poster child for moving to Wyoming, a small general contractor with a great reputation for high quality stain grade finish work moved to town, called up every contractor and was willing to work for cheap to get his foot in the door. He showed up on a job I was on running trim and we chatted a bit. Later the owner of the company asked how he was doing and chatted about the nice looking trim and how he could never hire the guy as an employee because all the extra nailing made him too slow, and as a sub his bids would be too expensive per foot for knotty alder or pine trim that gets used all over the place. I could tell the guy was sharp, capable, likeable, professional, good work ethic, could be fast enough if he could give up his old habits, had a pile of projects back east, but struggled for two seasons as a sub and moved back home.

Many western carpenters and subs for the best paying remote vacation homes are jack of all trades and the guys who stay the busiest are not only the best at what they do, but are flexible and well rounded. A cabinet maker who can also frame interior walls, tile the backsplash, has a brother who will do the granite, can install or site build cabinets, install appliances and isn’t afraid of running the exhaust duct through the roof is much more valuable than a guy building custom cabinets for 20 years in a shop.

 

[Hnthrdr]

You want to give me a quarter acre to build on when you do?

once my wife owns it outright we can talk haha but she is more attached to that property than she is me I think haha but it’s a special place so I get it, you know how to cowboy some? It’s gonna be something learning as a 36 year old man child…

 

[Crummysnipe]

The first time I’m coming across questions of this nature

 

[SuperDUECE22]

What do your 10&12 year old girls think about leaving everything because of the excitement you get when being "west" for 2 weeks a year ?

 

[3325]

My wife and I are talking of moving our family of 4 to Wyoming or Montana from Michigan.

We’ve had a little fun with you on this thread, but here’s a serious question. You’re already a Michigan resident. If you’re looking for a more small town or backwoods lifestyle, why not relocate to the Upper Peninsula? Seems like this would have to be easier logistically?