North Dakota Housing

As previously mentioned, the family unit is headed off on the great adventure of relocating the homestead to Grand Forks, North Dakota. We're planning on buying a house in Grand Forks, and due to their significantly lower cost, we should be able to purchase significantly more house than we'd ever be able to afford here in San Diego. We're looking at house in the southwest part of town, just south of downtown near the Greenway, a bike/jogging path the runs along the Red River. There are a good number of 100 year old houses that are just awesome and well within our price range.

I knew going into this move that the cost of living and thus houses would be less expensive, but I wasn't prepared for the list prices of $150,000 to $190,000 for some very nice houses. Generally the houses are 2,000 or more square feet and have a good sized yard (a must for me and my green thumb/urban farming urges), which is unheard of in San Diego, let alone anywhere in Southern California.

The Gluten Free Girlfriend and I also have a special advantage in that her parents (especially her Mom) live only an hour and half away and are able to check out houses ahead of time and give us a report. This is a huge benefit in that we are able to check out houses without having to fly out all the way to North Dakota to look at them. We'll screen houses online, have the Gluten Free Girlfriend's Mom preview the place and then we'll draft up our top three or four choices then fly out and look at them first hand. Hopefully this will require us to only have to make one trip out there before we actually move.

We're looking for at least three bedrooms, one for sleeping, one for a guest room, and one for an office for both of us (though most houses have either a den or a large finished basement that would suffice for an office), a good sized fenced yard for the dogs, and a nice enough kitchen for all our cooking issues. We're not really looking for anything special, our main concerns are adequate fenced yard for the dogs and livable space for the humans. More to come on our house hunting.....