I want to live in South Dakota. (Sioux Falls, Rapid City: for rent, house)

[Being pushed out]

To Sandi Z

Hi Sandi Z and to all here;
Your area sounds like something I have been looking for so desperately for some time now. I was born and raised (51 years) in a little town of about 1500 in North Idaho and was a fourth generation logger here. We the natives (life long residents) are now Being Pushed Out by the big out of state developers and retired folks with more money than they know what to do with. Land around here has shy rocketed. What used to be a decent $35,000 dollar home just a short five years ago now is selling for $150,000 PLUS and it is in my books a fixer upper now even when you can find one. If you looked around you could at one time find a good solid fixer for the 10 too 15 thousand range but no more. Land that I could buy not to many years ago for 4 and 5 hundred dollars an acre is now is now 20 thousand and up per acre. The work force here and the native folk (life long resident) and their families are being PUSHED OUT because we can not get funding for the high prices now days, so as bad as I hate to I am looking else where to live out the rest my days. This town also had their yearly festivals that every one seamed to take part it. The parades was community based not commercial. If someone had a fire or something bad happen the whole town was there to help rebuild you. Folks would literally give you the shirt off their backs, but now more. Those days are gone for ever I fear.

I broke my back in two places plus blew out two disks in an accident in the woods some year ago. I could not go back to the woods because of it so I bought a business. We was doing well but not getting rich by no means but was paying the bills until I then got colon cancer. Well, we could not keep up then because I was down and to cut a long story short we lost everything because we did not have the proper insurance/s. Trying to start all over here at one time was easy, the people was there for you, if you needed a new home one was there. If you could not get the loan to pay for it the owner would carry the note. That is how things were done, but it is gone now.

As a kid our home suffered from a fire. I remember my Mother sitting on the front lawn with her head in hands crying like she had just lost her sole. BUT, the fire was not even totally out yet when people started showing up with food and cloths and best of all their open arms that help my Mother. With in just a few hours we had a large camp trailer to stay in on site and the area people and businesses rebuilt our home better and larger that it was with in a week. Even the kids then was the same. We could get some pretty hard winters here with a lot of snow. If you was disabled or a senior the kids would shovel of your roof and walk ways and would never ask for a penny, now days they have their hand out before they even start if you can get them to want to start.

It has taken a while but I have to come to grips. I know I can not start over here again here and we dream of owning our own home again. With my back it is hard to work full time, but, I can not get Social Security and still have dreams so I work and do it as hard as I came. I am a good satellite technician (Dish Network) and work as many hours as I can doing that plus I make custom furniture, garden arbors, counter tops and the such with my dream of doing that full time. We are struggling very hard to make ends meet but with rent being in the $900 to $1,500 a month range it is hard so I am looking to leave my roots and look for another place. Something small with housing still affordable enough that I may pay it off before I leave this world so My wife will still have a home when I am gone. I hope to bring my Father with us if we can find something because he loves the small town living also and hates to see what this place has become. He has been here 80 years and his father was here for 86 years.

So to bring this long boring story to an end I would love the possibility to maybe come to your state if the folks there would have us life long Idahoans. It sounds like home there.

I understand if you prefer not to tell me your town, but the names of some of the papers you mentioned with the housing prices in your post would be most helpful and very much appreciated. I am not a good computer person and there for do not search the Internet very well, but I did find this forum.

My e-mail address is open so a private message can be sent if prefered.

Thank you very much to any one that may have any info and have the best of days to all.

Being Pushed Out:

[Jammie]

HI. Your story is so sad, especially with the physical problems involved. I also have had a bit of spinal problems and have had two fusions and two more discs are protruding so I know it can be pretty rough. But I'm like you and just keep on working away. I think it's just better for us to do that.

Your post reminded me of the way so many in Florida are feeling. They're being invaded by foreigners and northerners. I read on the Idaho post one evening and learned that you have a lot of transplants there so I understand what you're saying.

I'm not sure what you mean by a small town since it differs for all of us, but I'll try to give you a bit of info.

So. Dak. has a big advantage over several states since we don't have a state income tax. The state is like two different worlds geographically. We're divided by the Missouri River. I live East River, but the beautiful scenery is West River. Sioux FAlls is the largest city in our state with a population of about 140,000 or so. There are small towns around it, but they're actually not metro areas since there is space between the towns. It would probably be the most expensive place to buy a house, but there is a lot of job opportunities there. There are a lot of medium sized towns, too. There's Chamberlain, Huron, Mitchell, Aberdeen, etc. Mitchell is the only town I know the population of right of hand and that's just under 15,000. Housing is quite a bit more affordable in these town. In Mitchell, you could get a very nice home for 100,000. Each town has several smaller towns near it, but many of them are lacking in employment opportunities, but housing can be as low as 10,000 for a fixer upper or 30,000 could get you a very liveable home. But driving to work can be very tiresome if we have a bad winter.

We have some West River members here and they'll be able to tell you more about their region, but I'll touch on it a bit. It is absolutely beautiful out there with the Badlands and Black Hills and Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, etc. They get more snow then we do, but it melts fast since their days warm up quite nicely. Rapid City is the second largest city in So. Dak. and I'll venture a guess of ABOUT 60,000 people. That would be your best bet for employment in the Hills area. Spearfish is a beautiful town with a population of about 10,000 people. Hill City, Custer, Lead, Sturgis (biker destination), and Deadwood (yup, the one in the show on HBO) are just a few of the towns out there. Their homes are generally higher priced, but I'd venture to guess that the smaller towns near Rapid would give you more reasonably priced housing.

You may want to check out the Hill City Prevailer or the Black Hills Pioneer or the Rapid City Journal. Our capitol, Pierre, has a paper called something like The Capitol. The Sioux Falls ARgus Leader and the Mitchell Daily Republic will also give you some info. Hopefully someone else will come along with more info for you and if there's anything else I can answer for you, I'd be happy to. Just forgot to add that we're the same age.

[Sandi Z]

To answer the question are there gangs in S. Dak. Yes. But there are gangs everywhere these days. My son is married to a girl from the Rosebud Res and yes, the Mexican gangs are trying to get a foothold there as well as Pine Ridge, but they aren't having a lot of luck.
I was also raised in a logging area, but in Oregon, lived in logging camps too so know exactly how bad someone can get hurt in the business.
The west river area is nice but it isn't the least expensive in any way shape or form. We lived in Hot Springs and the housing prices have shot up as it is the home of the Miss So. Dak pageant and has a history and has health spas and old hotels that are being refurbished, so the visitors have started buying there and they really raised the rents and home prices. Hill City and Deadwood are way up there too. They also get a lot of snow and cold temps there in winter. I never thought of it as a banana belt area at all when we had 4 ft of snow in the driveway.
The central area is the least expensive. The largest town in the center is Pierre which is also the capital. It is pronounced like a dock where boats tie up, not the French name. It mainly depends on what type of job you are looking for whether or not you can afford to live in the rural areas. If you can work from home or don't need a highly technical job then you can find them but the towns pay decent wages too so you just have to watch for what you want or are qualified for. If you want to start a business the state is a good one to do it. The laws aren't bad for small business and your best bet is something that will cover the summer as well as the winter months since we definately have a 2 season year.
The Winner or Gregory area is good to live in, not high priced and we are the Pheasant hunting capital which means that a lot of tourists come and spend money which helps the economy a lot. Places you might check for local information are the Winner chamber of Commerce and Gregory chamber of Commerce websites,(our local nickel ad papers) at www.farmerandrancherexchange.com or the www.dakotaactionrocket.com
The only bad part of living here is that if you have to have major medical care it is a long trip to Rapid City or Sioux Falls. We have local hospitals and DRs from the big cities come to our outlying clinics on a regular basis but the big stuff is done elsewhere. The VA has one big hospital in Hot Springs and can't remember where else.
The house we bought in Colome(near Winner)for $23,000. goes for $143,000 in Sioux Falls and $88,000. in Rapid. Two weeks ago there were 2 BR homes listed for $13,000. in a couple of area papers. It depends on how fancy a place you want.
Some papers you might contact are the Winner Advocate, Gregory Times-Advocate,Tripp Star ledger,Armour Chronicle, Avon Clarion, Corsica Globe. My advice is to come here and spend some time to see if you like it.
I love living here. We have lived in 4 states and this one is by far the best, but we don't go to Starbucks or Olive Garden and it's 98 miles to Sears, WalMart or Sams Club. We have chain stores like Pamida, Alco, Family Dollar and Dollar General. If you are used to small town living you will get by fine. Hope this has answered some of your questions but am sure there are a lot more.

[Being pushed out]

Thank you Jammie and Sandi Z. All your info is most helpful.

I am sorry Jammie if I made my post come across as sad, I did not mean to do that, I guess it is just the way I write. I am also sorry to here of your back problems. I have had six operations with two sets of steel bars and more bone fusion than I care to think about. I can not go through an airport with out setting off their alarms so I to know how you feel.

Small town living (under 2000) is all I have know most of my life. I have lived in logging camps and towns with less than 300, in fact one of the businesses I owned was in a village in North Idaho with 150 year round residents on a destination Lake, meaning a destination spot for tourists and vacationers.

We lived in Salem Oregon for a few months because my wife’s family is there. I was in a number of scrapes and at the explosion level with in a few weeks and gone with in three months. Gangs, well these so-called people are showing up all over and bad in Salem. We had a problem here with some that called their selves the Bloods a few years ago. They did get into our schools and did cause some problems. The folks that are here from the cities just took them in stride saying they are used to it and learned to live AROUND them. The law did not make many attempts to control them so a number of the native folks did. These are folks that WILL NOT learn to live around anything let alone go to the other side of the street to avoid one of them so they dealt with it head on and now we do not have much trouble other than the normal teenage pranksters and occasional vandal usually caused by boredom.

I want to find a small place that people still believe that wants mine is mine and yours is yours, but what ever is mine is yours IF YOU ASK FIRST. There are two things that I will not loan. My hunting rifle and my wife and she says it is in that order. HA-Ha. I do not care if I get a place that only has two walls and a half a roof as long as it is my own and can fix it the way I want with out the neighbor looking out their kitchen window into mine and take a shower without someone seeing my bare butt.

It sounds like the satellite repair field may not be to good in your area and so my dream of building custom woodworking’s may not be either. I build is stuff like bedroom sets, custom wood counter tops, entertainment centers, garden arbors, right down to toilet paper holders and birdhouses. So if I may ask in your folk’s opinion would this stuff sell there or be market for it even if its down the road in the bigger towns. Are there good flea markets that one might sell it at? I do need to make a living and as I can not get S.S and would not take welfare if it was handed to me I would need to find an area to do this in. To drive 100+ miles does not bother me at all. We would also look at managing a Mom and Pop motel or a diner. We owned two motels and two restaurants at one time so that is something we know a good deal about. To toot my own horn, I can cook. I even have my own dry steak rub that good many folks think I should market but that takes knowledge out of my area and money. But, I can cook you a prime rib that you would die for. I do not even like prime rib, go figure.

Regretfully we do not have the money to spare to go spend a couple of weeks looking, so we would have to make our decision from what research we can do and from the word of good folks like your selves. Nothing can be any worse than it is right now. We do not have our own home and NEVER will have one again here. The hard part will be leaving our two boys and our grandkids plus our roots that’s been here for over 130 years. Both of our boys are log truck drivers and not doing to bad. The oldest one owns his own home but the youngest I am afraid will never have his own here now. A logger now days just can not pay for a $200,000 + dollar home, but I can always pray they would come up with us sooner or later.

I hope you folks do not mind my long posts. I am not good with words. If you can say it in ten words it take me fifty. I try to convey who we are and how we think but also probably get to deep into it and for that I am sorry.

If ANYONE has any info, knows of a run down place that may or may not have an acre or two, especially if it could be owner carried (condition does not matter) knows of a Mom and Pop motel and/or a diner to manage or possibly own, PLEASE – PLEASE keep us in mind. Again to toot my own horn, we are good honest folks; we do to others as they do to us and would give the shirt off our backs to help someone else in any way we can. I am not one to turn the other cheek when treated wrong, but we do NOT have a big city attitude nor do we think we are better than anyone else. Heck if anything I feel just the opposite. It is hard to start over at 50+ and half disabled, but we will, somewhere.

Thanks you for the info and/or advice you have and may give.

Best of days to you all.

Mark

[Jammie]

Oh don't worry about long posts. I love reading your posts and it gives us an idea of what you may be looking for. I'd guess you're probably checking out our newspapers and I just thought of a couple more good internet tools to use. Just put a So. Dak. city into your search engine and checkout the profile. Like this~ Hot Springs, SD detailed profile. It will give you a bit of info although it's somewhat outdated since it's from the 2000 census. One of the things it will list is the nearby cities and you can check any you are interested in. If you find a couple of interesting areas, you may then want to go to the Sperlings site and they have a spot where you can compare two cities. It will tell you the cost of living, crime rate, housing costs, unemployment rate, etc. Since you've had a bit of time to check things out, do you have any idea what area of So. Dak you may be interested in? If so, we could give you a list of towns in that area. I'm sure we're all willing to help as much as we can.

[Being pushed out]

Thank you again Jammie for your response and NO I do not know were we want to go yet but the biggest key is cheep housing but still make money some how. When I mean cheep I mean the prices like Sandi Z mentioned. I do not care about resale value or what it might be worth 5, 10 or 15 years down the road. I need it cheep so we can start -starting over with limited funds plus we want a place to spend the rest of our years in. I do not do much of anything with short term in mind.

I have not had much time yet to check things out. I downloaded a new spyware program today and it cause a bad software conflict that took me some time to get so I could even get the thing to boot up, but I will check some of it later. I do not sleep much so I am at this a lot at two and three in the mourning.

I wish I knew someone that lived up there, it would make it easier. That way if we did move up there they could show us around and introduce us to other folks, but I guess when you start over it sometime means totally from scratch.

The job thing or being able to make a living will be the deciding factor. We do not need much but hate worrying if the house payment will be there on time.

Well thanks again and please do send any info you may get or have. You can also e-mail me through this forum if you prefer.

Thanks again and have a great night.

Mark

[ladynitenday]

I have been doing some checking and several people say that having someone who does custom woodworking or cabinet making would be really welcomed in most of the towns around here. Several have friends who work for satellite installers too and fiber optic installers too as they need people to work in the outlying areas. There are a lot of people who do custom work in the small towns and as their names spread the customers start coming from further away to buy. Hope that helps a bit. I know I do custom rugs and wall hangings and also knitting and seem to be getting a better reputation and more customers. My husband does electronic, small engine and boat motor repair and we are getting customers from Sioux Falls, Rapid and down in Nebraska too. You do good work and the rest just follows.

[Being pushed out]

Thank you Ladynitenday for your checking on this, it was very kind and highly appreciated.

I can see it will take the help of some kind folks like your self, Jammie and Sandi Z for a move like this to happen if at all, even as much as I would like it. The realtors there had not been much help yet in looking for a low priced home and I can not blame them in a sense because of their commissions. I have tried to research some of the area papers and not had much luck there in even finding any listing yet. I have seen a good number of low priced homes on realtors web sites that look very prospectfull but have only received one response so far and they sent me info on homes $50,000 too a $100,000 over what I said I was looking for.

I have not built any custom cabinets as of yet but do not believe it would be to hard depending on what one would want. The ones I have built was of a rustic cabin type design made of all cedar, they do look very nice but may not work well in a $250,000 modern home. This is the type of stuff I do mostly (RUSTIC) made with cedar, old barn wood, pine and oak. I also do custom counter tops made of any type of wood in most any pattern. They are sealed and covered with a rock hard clear two part coating that will with stand the heat from hot pots and pans and will not chip or dent when something heavy is dropped on it. They are gorgeous and would work in most any style of home, but they are costly to build. Cold water creek even bought some large bedroom Armoires and dressers from me and would have bought more if I could have had time from my day job to do them. I even build novelty type stuff like a popular and neat little bathroom cabinet that sits next to the toilet, it hold two rolls of toilet paper on a spool with more in the cabinet and it looks like an old out house including the quarter moon on the door, its kind of neat.

I am presently a citified technician for Dish Network installing and/or repairing their systems and also getting ready to get up-training for satellite Internet installation and/or repair. Because of some health issues I would prefer to not do this line of work much longer but would most defiantly do it if that is what needs to be. I have not looked into who and were one may work for in this field there yet and not sure where to start, but I suppose I should look into it soon. Heck, I have even been spending hour after hour on the internet looking for a home based something and MAN I can not believe how many folks are there just waiting for their next victim to come along, it is just unreal, so needless to say I am not having much luck there.

Well here is a long one again. Seems like the words just do not shut off to well sometimes. SOMETIMES !!!
No most of the time.

I thank you very much for your help and as always it is most helpful from anyone and again highly appreciated.

Have a good one.

Mark

[indigosd]

You would love it here!

[susandeanetrees]

South Dakota is wide open spaces, friendly people with low crime rate and low unemployment. Contact me and I can help you find your new home in Sioux Falls which is the biggest city in the state....
trees

Originally Posted by thoepfner

Hi Anybody.

We want to live in South Dakota. My Family and me come from Germany (Europe), near Hanover. We've found this Place over the Internet. Can anybody tell more from South Dakota?

Thanks, Torsten Hoepfner