Considering Northern Idaho (sale, to rent, mobile home)

[FlopsyPrince]

My wife and I are strongly leaning toward moving to the Spokane/Couer D'Alene area for a variety of family reasons. I am currently self employed (doing information security research) and teaching for an online college, so I can pretty much live anywhere. I do need good Internet access, so that is an important issue.

We are probably more suburbanites, but having some land not too remote has its appeal. Have to self fund this, so I must keep the costs down. Will probably break even selling my house here in the Dallas area, so not much cash after that. We also have 4 cats which we will keep, making renting much more of a challenge.

Any recommendations? Key considerations in my view are:

- Affordable (a very relative term)
- High speed Internet access available at a reasonable price (<$200 per month for something fairly reliable). It probably won't hold up to my Verizon Fios deal now, but I will live with that.
- Could either find a place to rent (likely a house) that would live with 4 cats or owner-financed buy (have thought of putting a single wide on land, but not the top desire - only temporary).
- Ideally have teaching opportunities (IT and information security) within a reasonable driving distance. I only have a M.S.
- Near enough to Spokane a good thing in case I got a "day job" there for a while. I can live with driving an hour if necessary.
- Someplace nearby that my adult daughter, husband and granddaughter could live. They are starting out and not highly skilled, but my daughter would love to work with horses.
- My mother-in-law is in govt paid housing. I want to get her off that, but it is likely necessary for the short term, though I might buy another mobile home for a while if the land option mentioned above happens.

I lean toward Idaho over Washington since my wife and I are more on the conservative end of things, though I have gone more libertarian recently.

Any suggestions? How is owner financed land going these days? How hard would a later sale be if we found we couldn't handle the location?

FP