williston? (Fargo, Valley City, Hope: RV parks, real estate, apartments)

[ioneoskay]

What is there to do in Williston and how are house prices?

[DaninEGF]

The Williston area is the center of North Dakota's gas and oil industry and it has been booming out that way and as a result places to stay are hard to find. The town itself is the retail center for northwest ND and far northeast MT...I know it has a Walmart Supercenter and Kmart....and other stores. I have not been there myself so other stores, etc I just dont know about. Here is a link to the city web page for lots more info and a link to the town newspaper.

http://www.willistonnd.com/

The area is in the middle of a rich hunting and fishing area being along the Missouri river. Weather is quite variable....can be very cold in the winter and quite warm in the summer (but usually not humid in that part of ND). There is a Williston College (2 yr I think).

You can check the below link for local real estate...but from what I saw avbl you do have a few 10-15 yr old split levels (2500 sq ft) that run around $165,000. Temp housing and rentals are hard to come by due to lots of jobs and workers in the area. Someone from Williston hopefully can fill you in more.

http://www.dakotarealty.net/fredricksen.htm

[shamus]

last summer while driving through williston to minot I saw one of the biggest houses I've ever seen. Must be some of that oil money?

[chester]

Williston is a nice town. It is currently in the middle of another oil boom, so lots of people moving in looking for places to live. I just read where a homeless shelter is housing some single oil field workers along side of homeless people. (sureal huh? young guys making 50-60,000 a year living in a homeless shelter because of no place to live)...however, the good news is, there are many new homes and condo's being built...new sub-divisions in the works, an abandoned trailer court from the 80's boom bust has re-opened...with new trailers to rent from 700 (2bdrm-2bath) to 1,000 (dbl wide 3bdrm-2bth)...this includes your lot rent. Apartments and rental housing are non existant...and not much on the market for houses currently. They have waiting lists from people for apartments.
As far as what to do? It is what you make of it. Because it is not a huge town...(currently around 15-18,000 in the emmediate fringe) they have the basic fast food, national chain store shopping, lots of bars and grills, opening 3 new 24hr gyms, good hunting-fishing...etc...basic oil town...but Williston is actually a nice looking town. You might want to check it out first.

By non-existant, I mean the apartments and rentals are all occupied. But lots of jobs available.

[Roloff1976]

We were up in Williston for a wedding a couple weeks ago...wow...that town is sure building the new houses...and NICE ones. I heard there was a housing shortage, but heard they have a couple new devolopments going up. We drove around and were impressed. Also surprised...there were holes in the ground all over town where they were just moving the dirt for new houses, and signs up saying "sale pending" or "sold"...even before they had a foundation poured.

[Cain]

hopefully the boom there isn't just because of oil. Need to have solid jobs in other fields too.

[Roloff1976]

They are working on that very hard. Oil has always been a part of Williston since the 50's. I lived in Williston during the 70's oil boom, and have been back many times since to visit family and friends. Even during the bust times, Williston held its own. Since the bust of the 80's, Williston still was home to most of ND's energy companies, and with this new boom, these companies are expanding and hiring like crazy. Over the years, Williston did get some companies NOT oil related...Sabin metal out of NY state, where they process precious metals and refine them (like gold, platinum, silver, etc...) Holland American (the cruise ship company) opened their reservation center in Williston and is doing very well. They also are building an agriculture industrial park where they will be building an ethanol plant, small power plant, and a potato processing plant. Also lots of irrigation expansion for specialized agriculture products...so they are hoping this will offset oil jobs...if/when the next bust comes. But industry people are saying this boom will be around for quite a while...the price of oil is not going down anytime soon. Fingers crossed.

[chester]

Read in a couple papers where a couple developers out of Fargo and Valley City are building up to 600 housing units up in Williston? Marcil and Valley Devolpment I think. They really need them soon. We were up there a couple weeks ago and were surprised by the number of pop up campers, tents, motor homes, 5th wheelers, etc... parked at construction sites around town..and in all the RV parks. Even the Red Mike golf course 20 miles east of Williston was full of campers because of no housing in Williston. Someone said many of the new homes going up with the tents and campers parked next to the sites, are people building their own homes and living in campers, because they can't get enough builders and places to stay? Wow...winter is just around the corner...if these people are not locals, hope they realize how cold it will be getting soon.

[Roloff1976]

I saw that in the Fargo paper. That will be a nice addition to Williston. I know there are a couple of new developments in the works. Hopefully all these new houses will fill the niche that is currently missing from the Williston housing market. I know a lot of people would like to move their families up there from out of state, but they are leaving the families back home and workers living in motels until they find housing. This should help Williston a lot.

[eturner0203]

We are transferring up from South Louisiana to Willingston. We are a young couple both working in the oil and gas industry. We have been looking for homes, schools etc, anything to help us gain information about the town and what it has to offer. We have looked into realestate with the basinbrokers, and national realators, and haven't had much luck. We would love to hear from anyone in our age group (20-30) in the oil and gas industry who have moved to North Dakota.