I am debt free as of this morning and Financial Minimalism.

[GWS]

Well done. Feels like a great weight is lifted off of you, doesn't it?

 

[CoastRange57]

And right now is a good time to get a mortgage if one can find a good value on real estate, one has steady secure employment and one is so inclined.

I noticed the place next to ours came up for sale yesterday morning. After daily chores and work I got on realtor.com to look the price up and the place was already pending. So I scrolled around my zip code a bit and noticed that virtually every place listed was shown as pending. Noticed in the mail two letters (pitches) from realtors so called one up.

He said that most of the burn out victims were getting pay outs from their insurance companies and that most were not going to rebuild in the areas they were burned out in and that they all were looking for properties in the sub 300K range. My area here in Crooked River Ranch has a lot of those types of properties and the burn outs were looking to buy places right now and not wait a couple of years to rebuild.

The pending sales were across the board on price points from sub 300K up to the 500K range. The people that had no mortgages or good equity are getting payouts from the insurance companies, buying cash or getting smaller mortgages. These people were from the fires in the valley, southern Oregon, and California. A lot from California. Even bare dirt properties are going at good prices, since you can usually do a build in 4 to 6 months with a manufactured home.

The displacement of the large numbers of people from these fires creates these micro economies in affordable areas, which is ours right now. The entire tri county area here excepting the liberal sh*thole of Bend and its grossly over priced real estate is doing quite quite well. At our recent garage sale, there were 3 couples from Paradise, CA that had bought properties here in CRR, since it will be years before there is suitable infrastructure to allow any kind of residential building there.

 

[The Heretic]

I had not thought about the market with relation to all the people who lost their homes due to the wildfires.

 

[Oregonhunter5]

There's just as big or bigger group leaving California for new horizons. We have 6 new Idahoans every day for the last several years.