Barrow vs. Nome? (Anchorage, Fairbanks: sale, brokers, homes)

[stiffnecked]

Nome also has a Subway and paved roads. Plus like many other villages an AC Store. Besides saloons where else can you pan gold outta the beach sands? Yep, in Nome.

AC Value Center

[mizzile]

I'd go with Nome. Nome has lots of roads and some interesting stuff around it.

[pittperson]

Soulful,
Like you I live in the lower 48 and love the idea of moving to Alaska. I've been having the same problem seeing which city I'd like most. Out of these two (now I'm not an expert) but I personally would pick Nome. For me a few things that I liked was...
1. Nome gets well warmer than Barrow and I like the cold but 55 degree summers sound more fun than 35 degree ones.
2. The sun doesn't set in the summer in Barrow for a long time and I don't think its as bad in Nome
3. If you want to visit the lower 48 flights to Anchorage Int'l are cheaper from Nome than from Barrow (still expensive but cheaper)
4. I may be wrong about this but it seems to me that Nome has a lot more interesting history (gold rush, 1925 serum run, etc.) and general things to do.
5. Now I do not know personally but people on this thread seem to think people generally like living in Nome more than Barrow.

Now I know these are not the best reasons but just some things I thought were better in Nome.

[soulful]

Good points. Pittperson. The other thing is the cost of housing. Nome looks much more expensive than Barrow. I have only looked at a few realtor sites and didn't find a great one for Barrow (I didn't try hard but will do that shortly).
Does anyone know why Nome is so expensive in terms of housing? And am I correct that Barrow is less costly? Not rentals, but purchases for equivalent properties.

[pittperson]

Ok I've been looking at real estate in Nome and Barrow. It seems to me Nome is generally easier to actually find a house. I looked for both Nome and Barrow real estate and for Barrow I tried multiple site and couldn't find any houses. As for Nome I found houses the first site I tried, and for Nome it seemed like real estate could go anyware from around $50,000 for single family homes to 270,000 for big houses. Actually on Trulia.com (which was the first site when I looked up Nome Real Estate) I saw a house 3 bedrooms 1 bath 1,500 sq feet for $79,000 (and it didnt look that bad). Now I don't what your price range but that didn't seem to bad. Now as I said I couldn't find anything for Barrow but according to City data Nome average house cost is $182,000 and Barrows is $181,000 so they are about the same. Also city data said that cost of living in in Barrow is 98 in Nome its 95 the USA average is 100 so Nome is slightly less expensive. Also lastly you previously said something about the populations being the same, now this is true but keep in mind from 2000 to 2009 barrow lost 10 precent of its population and Nome gained 4 precent of its population. And Nome has been steadily gaining population every census since the 1930 census (except for the 1980 census it lost 2 precent).

[ShipOfFools42]

I'll put in the relatively worthless thought that for some strange reason, I've always thought that if I moved to a bush village, I would want to be on the Seward Peninsula. And that was before I knew about the Nome road system! Nome would also be MUCH less of a shock to the system, since the daylight hours are slightly less ridiculous and temps are better. Nome also has a lore surrounding it; you know, tales of the gold rush age and all that. Barrow is essentially just a whaling village - er, well, a whaling village with a very large population and a NWS center and a NOAA site and a whole bunch of other stuff. Kind of an "Arctic boomtown".

Where are you moving from, if I may be so bold? I'm trying to move to Alaska myself in the near future, so good luck to you!

[soulful]

I can't find any real estate listings in Barrow. I just went through 2 pages of google searching "real estate barrow ak". There must be local real estate offices but they simply aren't coming up easily on google.
I may be able to look at one of the barrow sites that lists local businesses and find the name of a realtor and google using the actual name.

[soulful]

I can only find two houses for sale in Barrow: one on Transit and one on Itta(I think the second was on Itta). There must be more but I obviously am still having trouble finding a site which lists the inventory.

[warptman]

The Nome Nugget - Alaska's Oldest Newspaper

[soulful]

The Nome Nugget for houses in Barrow?

I did find http://www.thearcticsounder.com/ but at the moment the classified section will not come up online.