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I am a college student, who is about to be married and adopt a 2 year old. I am majoring in wildlife management to get my certification as a wildlife biologist. I want to work for the government and am interested in taking a job in North Dakota.
I just need to have a few questions answered.
1.) Is North Dakota a good place for a newly graduated student to take a job and live?
2.) What are the prices on property? Taxes?
3.) Is North Dakota a good place to raise a child?
Here are other states I am interested in moving to:
Alaska
Montana
New Mexico
Colorado
Nebraska
South Dakota
Wyoming
Utah
I really appreciate the help!
Jessica
P.S. We love the idea of mountain life and would prefer cooler summers. We are very tired of the heat here in Texas.
Well, South Dakota may interest her as well, considering the Black hills is not a full mountain range but has a good mix of both plains and mountain? Possibly?
Montana from my experience is a lot like western ND with the badlands (but I haven't' been far to the west so I couldn't say on that.
New Mexico is about the same as Texas in regards to the summer heat. I can't speak on Utah or Wyoming as I have never lived in either state. Nebraska is tornado country and doesn't have much for Mountains.
Colorado is nice and my sister loves it out there, however the snow falls very heavy in the winter and depending on where you live in the state, you could find adjusting to higher altitudes a bit hard, otherwise you may enjoy it.
Just for the record, eastern and western MT are like night and day. Eastern MT is very similar to western ND...but Western MT is very mountainous and very forested...the entire western 1/3 of MT is a part of the Rocky Mountain range.
1.) Is North Dakota a good place for a newly graduated student to take a job and live?
Sure. If you can find a job, in general you are good to go. North Dakota has a funny way of doing things for newly graduated people, or at least, that what I saw initially. Jobs are looking for people who have experience, but, to get experience, you need a job first. I know of people who left ND for a few years to get experience so they could come back and work. Seems if the companies would hire them out of college and build on that, cut down on the "no jobs" situation some. You want to keep young people here in ND, HIRE them.
2.) What are the prices on property? Taxes?
For a 4 bedroom 2br 1800ish square ft home, 1990s built, you could look at about 120 - 150k, depending on the home and assuming its in a city or close to a city location. Taxes however are high in the state, for that home I stated property taxes in Fargo are about 2500 a year.
As a side note you won't be seeing incomes like say CA or the east coast for sure, but in general you are not paying 500K for a dump either.
3.) Is North Dakota a good place to raise a child?
North Dakota is an excellent place to raise a family. That is one of the big factors that lead us to come back to the state. Low population that due to the perceived weather issue keeps it low (cold yes, polar bears, no, and I have been asked about how the polar bears are here!). Excellent schools, safe neighborhoods, and in general a good "bootstraps" mentality of the people. You want these kind of values in your kids. After living in CT and seeing the "give me something for nothing" mentality that a lot of the youth were raised with, its a real shame. And the schools were a joke. You basically had to either sacrifice yourself to the mortgage company to get into a good public school area, or, put aside a chunk for private schools.
It is also nice that of the states out there, ND didn't appear to get itself really mixed up in the mortgage crisis like other places as you could afford a home with conventional lending practices, instead of Ninja loans. They also have a nice first time home buyer program through the state too.
All in all, I really like it out here.
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