Do Frances and Jeanne have you thinking of moving?
If you don’t mind trading the horror of hurricanes for the wrath of winter, you could make a windfall profit on the sale of your home, a new survey shows.
To really make a killing, though, you’ll have to move to Minot (rhymes with “why not”), N.D., or Great Falls, Mont., the two cheapest middle-management housing markets in the nation, according to Coldwell Banker’s 2004 Home Price Comparison Index.
The annual survey compares the average cost of a typical home bought by a middle-management professional in 348 markets throughout the country, said Jim Gillespie, president and chief executive of New Jersey-based Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp.
The typical home in the survey was a 2,200-square-foot single-family house with four bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, a family room and two-car garage. It was located in a neighborhood or ZIP code that is typical for corporate middle managers transferred to that area, Coldwell said. The survey included homes sold through July.
The average price of such a home in West Palm Beach is $323,975, but a comparable home in Minot costs only $130,300. That gives you enough change — $193,975 — to put into a really big fireplace.
But don’t be so fast to write off Minot, locals say.
“When there’s a blizzard coming, I get a cup of hot chocolate and a good book and just wait for it to be gone,” said Bruce Walker, broker/owner of Coldwell Banker 1st Minot Realty. “That’s not an option for a hurricane. You have to board up the windows and be gone.”
The city of nearly 40,000 people is situated in the northwest part of North Dakota, near the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. There’s a trade area of half a million people and a U.S. Air Force base 13 miles north of the city. The largest employers after the military are a regional hospital and the public school system.
Minot boasts a university, a symphony, an art museum, a dance company and summer theater. Today should be sunny and breezy, with a high in the mid-70s and a low in the lower 50s. The city has never had a hurricane, Minot Realtor Walker said — but the wind chill can plunge to 40 below zero.
If that’s too cold for you, the other places rounding out the top five on the cheapest middle-management housing list won’t be much more to your liking: Great Falls, Mont., Billings, Mont., and Arlington and Killeen, Texas.
If you want to stay warm in the winter, the survey shows, it will cost you.
Sunny California is home to four of the top five most-expensive executive housing markets, led by No. 1 La Jolla, home to The Scripps Research Institute, with an average price of $1.7 million. La Jolla, which also ranked No. 1 last year, is followed by Beverly Hills, Santa Barbara, Palo Alto and Greenwich, Conn.
The Coldwell survey found big price differences within states, not just among markets nationwide.
In Florida, homes in Key West cost the most, an average of $759,499. The cheapest market was Pensacola, with an average price of $169,975.
Homes for middle managers in Boca Raton, the only other local market in the survey, averaged $304,333.
