Where is it booming in Iowa??

[GeoMapster]

For Dubuque area, You will see Peosta, Asbury, Epworth and Farley that are growing but not fast. These towns are easily accessable to U.S. 20 which has 4 lanes highway.

For Cedar Rapids, Hiawatha and Marion are booming little bit slow.

For Waterloo-Cedar Falls, I don't see anything growing there. They are just the same.

For Des Moines area, Yep about West Des Moines but there are few towns are growing along and these are Waukee, Johnston and Ankeny.

Not sure about western Iowa as I don't go there much.

Oh about Davenport or Quad Cities area, Eldridge is growing.

I think that would be all for cities or towns in Eastern Iowa growing since 2000. Hope this helps you.

Have a great day!

Kevin

[Minnehahapolitan]

Iowa is just urbanizing, not nec. dying. Iowa City and DSM have been elaborated upon. DSM is getting quite the downtown. There is also alot of high tech stuff in Ames. Iowa City may be the best college town between Mpls and Austin. Cedar Rapids seemed dull to me, there should be ALOT more stuff downtown. The mall was more fun. but the economy is good. /\ Luke is right, Real estate in the midwest as a whole seldomly (read never) depreciates. I think Ariz. gets the Calif. boom and bust cycles, Iowa is steady. There are ample jobs to go around. You can certainly find one. The Midwest this side of Gary is doing just fine for itself. Personally, I would rather be around family than some percieved economy. Hope I was of some help. Good Luck
------Minnehahapolitan

[DSMGuy]

Another high mark for DM, in addition to being the 4th best place in the nation to start and run a business (Forbes), according to Kiplinger's Personal Finance Newsletter:

Kiplinger's rated cities on a number of different life stages and for the life stage "Married with Kids," Des Moines did very well.

Married with Kids:
1. Atlanta
2. Minneapolis-St. Paul
3. Des Moines
4. Provo, UT
5. Green Bay, WI

[midwest1]

Iowa is awesome. I particularly like Dubuque. It strikes me as a city that could really surprise a lot of people in the coming decades.

[patmc]

Some of the small towns in Iowa have opportunity. You might be able to get more local opinions at HeyIowa.com

[SharpHawkeye]

I'm not sure why GeoMapster didn't include North Liberty or Tiffin in his boom-town list, but those are the Iowa City area boom suburbs...and they are booming. North Liberty is on track to see it's population doubled since 2000.

Two other options to consider in your quest to find flipping opportunities are 1. flipping houses near downtown Des Moines or 2. Trying to find the next boom-let.

Des Moines has seen a huge explosion of people wanting to live downtown and near-downtown recently with many new projects and residential building conversions. You could not go wrong renovating a house in the Sherman Hill neighborhood or (to a lesser extent) Ingersoll Avenue.

Option 2 is more dicey, but I imagine could be quite profitable--flipping houses or buying land in one of the "next big thing" suburbs. Here I'd be looking at smaller, farther out places like Cumming (--the actual name of a real town, btw), Granger or Polk City.

[Chicago60614]

Originally Posted by Shaines103

We moved to Iowa City about 2 years ago. My husband got a job offer he couldn't refuse! I'd lived on the East Coast for 35 years and I can't say enough about HOW HORRIBLE it is to live here. There is NOTHING to do. No shopping - lame stores like Younkers which is now owned by a chain that was back East that we NEVER would have even walked into! One food store to choose from. We had 4 food store chains within 10 minutes of where we lived before. Few decent restaurants. People aren't friendly - we're considered outsiders since the last 10 generations of our families haven't been from here. Cedar Rapids is known as the 'city of 5 smells'!

We miss professional sports, shopping, and having lots of things to do very close to home.

We're going to retire in the Tucson area. My advise to you would be to have your family come visit you in civilization.

Haha, I had to laugh at this post. Might win the title for the most "DUH!" statement ever. Of course Iowa City isn't going to be like the east coast metros, professional sports teams, tons of entertainment, etc.

There are 50 million people living in a huge urban area. If you want that much at your hands you're only looking at areas of maybe 2 million or more. It's quite unfair to make comments like that when the situation was known before hand.

I personally love Iowa City, just spent 2 weeks there actually. I have to state that there is more than ONE grocery store chain, the Coral Ridge Mall alone has 4 department stores, so not sure why you just stayed at Younkers, and i don't even understand the "10 generations" comment.

My parents moved to Iowa City in the 50's when the area had 45,000 people. The area today has 120,000 people, all who had to move there from somewhere. I always loved that the 30,000 college students keeping the city turning over and replenishing it with new thoughts/views and opinions brought in from other regions/countries. I thought the people there were VERY nice and open when I was visiting lately. There seems to be a massive amount of new housing and commercial/retail sites going up all over town. The downtown is very cute, walkable, liberal, progressive and seemed busy at almost all hours.

I'd have to vote for Iowa City or Des Moines as the "booming" areas. I went to Des Moines on one of my days in Iowa, and I was very very impressed with their downtown. Lots of new office buildings, tons of new downtown housing, restaurants, new science center, riverwalk, Capitol building terrace, arena, renovated stadium, completely rebuilt freeway through town, new mall in West Des Moines with massive amounts of retail sprining up all over.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Many people think the state is dying, but it's just the small rural areas. If you look at the actual cities it's a different story.


Iowa City/Cedar Rapids 1950: 149,000
Iowa City/Cedar Rapids 2006: 320,000

Des Moines area 1950: 355,000
Des Moines area 2006: 604,000

[Highpointer]

Originally Posted by Shaines103

We moved to Iowa City about 2 years ago. My husband got a job offer he couldn't refuse! I'd lived on the East Coast for 35 years and I can't say enough about HOW HORRIBLE it is to live here. There is NOTHING to do.

How could you say that it is horrible to live in Iowa City? The August 2007 issue of Outside magazine reports the 30 best towns in which to live in America, and Iowa City is ranked as the best town to live in the Midwest. Therefore, how could you be dissatisfied with living in Iowa City?

[SharpHawkeye]

Part of living in Iowa City, or Iowa in general, or anywhere for that matter is keeping an open mind. If you move some place and stay close minded, like Shaines's example, you will obviously have a bad experience. You have to be willing to shop new places, seek out new experiences and generally engage with your community.

Besides? Who moves to Iowa expecting professional sports, huge malls and five-star restaurants? This is the land of Hawkeyes and Cyclones, mom-and-pop stores, greasy spoons and tenderloins. And some of us like it that way!