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Newsletter from Montana
August 2006
I really like it in Minnesota, so I reduced the price on my home in Red Lodge
in the historic district to $ 525,000 (it was appraised for $ 525,000 before we installed the $ 10,000 fence!) It has a triple garage, a cedar clad greenhouse, a heated driveway (the snow melts off at the flip of a switch!), all the original moldings and wood floors, English wallpaper and 3,576 sqft with 4.5 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. It would make a great B&B or just a very comfortable, classy home, we certainly enjoyed it and the kids could walk to the park and downtown, or the grocery store. Actually, they are hopping mad that I am selling it.
The
duplex lot in the country club
is now only $ 69,900. Sited on a bluff above Red Loge, it has all city utilities, paved road up to the front door with a nice curb and is less than a mile from downtown Red Lodge.
I have now posted photos of the inside of the cabin for the
ranch near Lewistown - 643 acres for $ 625,000. The CRP program has been successfully extended and the payments (almost $ 13,000 per year) will go on until the year 2009.
We have a new listing in the Cathedral Mountain Subdivision, which features one lake and two ponds adjacent to National Forest and across the road from the Stillwater River. It is a fully
furnished log cabin
tugged into a hillside with stunning mountain views from the deck and a walk out basement for just $ 155,000
I need more agents! My agents in Montana are overwhelmed and are crying for help. Information regarding the Montana real estate license is posted at the
state's website.
The real estate school I like best is
Connole-Morton
Montana entertains reciprocity with the following States: Alberta (Canada), Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming.
I also posted a
website for applicants.
Since I enjoy Minnesota so much, you might like it here too, would you like to come and take a look? Here are many small farms for sale, from fixers to wonders. Here you can keep animals and feed your whole family with just a small plot of land
If you click on the following link those are farms with 20+ acres between
$100,000-$295,000
and
$300,000+
If you would like me to enter your email address into an automated search for Minnesota as well, please let me know. If those links to the Minnesota MLS go south because of too much traffic, drop me a line, and I will email you a fresh link.
I also know of a small farm that is not yet on the market, with a nice farm house on 80 acres north of Detroit Lakes in Minnesota, which can be had for $ 295,000 - It will be approved for organic 60 acres of pasture and 20 acres of tillable field in spring. The farmer runs dairy cows on it now, which are also organic certified, in case you would be interested in buying cows as well.
Here are also some lakefront lots:
- Under $100,000
- $100,00-$200,000
- $200,00-$300,000
- Over $300,000
If you would like a topo map of any of these lakes, let me know and I will email it to you.
When you fly out here, there is a page where you can check on the latest status of your commercial flight. I put a link on the contact pages for both locations:
Minnesota
Montana
Since we have so many lakes in Minnesota, stuff gets lost when people ride around in a boat. So naturally there are divers who do nothing else but look for lost items, I thought the following
article in the Star Tribune makes interesting reading:
"Searching for lost treasure - In the depths of Minnesota's lakes, a Mound man makes a sideline of hunting for rings and things -- even a pickup truck." By Pam Louwagie, Star Tribune
You can reach Denny Geffre (the diver) on his cell phone at 612-968-2000. Sometimes he searches for days for an irreplaceable piece of jewelry and such.
If you have a 1031 exchange to do and cannot find the right property in time, give Laura Anderson from
SCI Investments
a call 208-608-1788 laurahanderson@cableone.net
She handles "Triple Net" income properties for tenants in common, so you would get a deed and be part owner of a commercial building of some sort. The properties, even though you do not own the whole thing by yourself, still qualify for a 1031 exchange and it is relatively easy and quick to buy and sell. This way you do not loose your 1031 status and you are collecting income while you are waiting for the right property to come along. The company is in Boise Idaho and SCI Properties is based in California, but they do these deals all across the US. If you call them directly, tell them I sent you.
When you move to the country, you do not have to fight people and the cost of living is obnoxiously low. Of course, there might be some obstacles, but it will invigorate your innovative spark and you can make things happen. The snowmobile for example, was developed to deliver mail in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
"Innovation is survival." Many executives have moved to the country, and they made all those cell towers happen and a fast Internet connection can now be had just about anywhere. We moved last month to a little farm in Northwest Minnesota, and when I signed Tanja up to be a Freshman in high school, she replied when asked where she lives: "In the middle of nowhere!" In the meantime, I got her a laptop and our router beams the Internet signal all over the house, now she feels connected again :-) Actually, we live west of Detroit Lakes and south of Audubon, which received its name in honor of the famous John J. Audubon, due to the abundance of birds in this area.
John James Audubon was an ornithologist painting and drawing birds around 1800. He received his education in art by the celebrated Jacques-Louis David, in France, and enjoyed having outrivaled his teacher in painting "the children of the woods". His paintings of birds and other animals bring fabulous prices in Europe. Audubon was a man of scrupulous honesty placing the highest value possible on his word. His confidence into his fellow men, however, led him to extend credit to any one, and, from this goodness of his heart, he became a heavy loser. Audubon wrapped his whole life around the study of Nature, being totally devoted to the
woods and wild things. He would stay for weeks and months in the forests studying.
Audubon and his partner ran a gristmill in Henderson, Kentucky, which they built in 1812. It was a remarkably constructed building, the foundation being of rock and "strong enough to withstand the weight of the Chicago post office." Quite a feat, considering there was no rock to be found around Henderson, so he must have brought in the rock by boat. In those days, the mode of navigation was in canoes and by pulling them with ropes from the shore upstream, quite a tedious process. It was the first mill in this section of Kentucky, and was very welcomed. Shortly after the building of this mill, Audubon also had the first sawmill built there. At that time, "whip sawing" was used, but he revolutionized the process by using steam, producing much better lumber. Unfortunately just after a few years of operation the sawmill burned down. At those times, there was no such thing as insurance, but Audubon took the loss in stride, still studying his birds in the forests. In 1816, he and his friend built a steamboat, but the commander he had hired, stole the boat and took off with it down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Audubon started in fiery pursuit, being of extraordinary energy when he set a goal; a walk of a hundred miles or more, was no hurdle for him. He did find the boat, but it was just too difficult to recover, so he sold it for a song and went home overland. Besides being a married man with two sons operating the gristmill and sawmill, Audubon also owned a general merchandise store, contracted for buildings, built boats and speculated in real estate. He was a man of wonderful enterprise and endless and untiring energy. With his progressive spirit, coupled with his splendid mind, if he would have had an honest partner of system and business tact, he would have accumulated an immense estate. He was always hard run, but no man ever accepted his trouble with more grace and composure.
The
National Audubon Society
started around 1900, about 50 years after John James Audubon deceased. The society's mission is "to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds and other wildlife for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity:"
Some of my distant family on my father's side had settled in Minnesota/Wisconsin, and I was happy to see that there are now well over 100 families with my maiden name around these parts. Since my daughter came for a summer visit, I wanted to introduce her to one of them, but he took off in his canoe harvesting wild rice! In Minnesota, you cannot only buy a hunting license, but also a harvesting license for $ 15 and harvest wild rice. After you bring it back, it needs to dry for a week and then you can sell what you do not need or trade it for honey and maple syrup, which other people around here are harvesting also. I put a
link to wild rice information on my website.
If your kids take a funny video of you, they can
upload it to the Internet
and then email the link to all your friends, for free! Of course that works for other videos you made as well.
I found a list of
countries around the world, which might come in handy, since school starts again.
Maps
are posted on that site as well.
Every year there is an aviation fair in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and thousands of people attend. Here is a photo log of one attendee flying there with his plane
from California to Oshkosh and back. Marvelous photos of the country between California and Wisconsin:
I replaced my desk chair with a giant exercise ball. Not only because I want to be on the ball at work, but to sit on a ball is great for posture. I am not alone. Today, nearly a third of the salespeople at Promotions Unlimited in Racine, Wisconsin, do an entire day's work while sitting - or attempting to sit - on bouncy spheres in their cubicles. "It's the best thing for people who sit all day," said Behling, 61, who insists that the ball-chair provides all-day muscle toning that helps control both her back pain and her posture. "I would never go back to a desk chair. Never." Scoff if you will; but the person over the partition at your office might be following the bouncing ball next. With the growing popularity of Pilates and other core-strength fitness regimens, employees are experimenting with balls as chairs, a practice once reserved for cutting-edge California workplaces such as Google, where nearly half of its employees sit on balls.
(Excerpts from an article I found in the Seattle Times)
If you like to join the crowd, choose a ball that is big enough so that, when you are sitting on it, your hips are at a 90-degree or slightly greater angle to your legs. The more rubbery the ball, the more durable and comfortable it will be. The top of your computer screen should be at eye level or 20 to 30 degrees below.
Place the keyboard close to your body so your elbows are at your sides and bent at a 90-degree angle.
Do not throw away your office chair right away. You might have to work your way up to being able to use the ball for a full workday. Start using the ball for five to 10 minutes every hour until your core muscles get stronger. Do not sit next to a heating vent or anything else hot. Do not sit on top of broken glass, near stairs or open landings.
Source: "Working on the Ball: A Simple Guide to Office Fitness" (Andrews McMeel Publishing) by Jane Clapp and Sarah Robichaud
"It definitely spices up your routine," said Julie Urban, 33, a technical writer who began working on the ball at her job at KHS USA in Waukesha, Wisconsin., at the suggestion of a physical therapist. Urban said that at first her colleagues had a ball teasing her for her silly-looking seat. "They're, like, 'Why do you have the Hippity-Hop?'" said Urban, who occasionally rolls the ball away from her desk to stretch out in a backbend. However, after a few months, colleagues got used to her chair preference - and the occasional pumping noises that came with it. One co-worker was inspired to take up a chair ball himself.
"It's actually very comfortable," that co-worker, Mike Kostich, said. "You're not rolling over like people think you would be." Most oversize exercise balls can be found at local sports-equipment stores for around $30 and require only occasional pumping.
Derek Allen, a 6-foot-2-inch, 185-pound senior vice president for a London-based market-research company, swears the blue ball he rolls back and forth among the three computers in his home office in Yorkville, south of Milwaukee, has made significant improvements in his abdominal six-pack.
The ball "looks rather precarious," Allen said. "But now my stomach is rock-hard."
Fitness and physical trainers promote the idea of sitting on a backless ball at work as a way to exercise abdominal control. The concentration and balance required to stay upright on a ball all day helps build strength at times when people could otherwise be using bad posture or leave muscles unused, they say.
Jane Clapp, co-author of "Working on the Ball," a book released this year offering an illustrated guide to sitting on the ball at work, said that so far employers have mostly been receptive to the practice because of its health benefits.
"I think there's a general movement to recognizing how unhealthy office work is," Clapp said. "People realize that incremental exercise is just as good, if not better, than doing a chunk of exercise."
The practice is widespread in Europe and Canada, where entire office buildings have replaced regular chairs with colorful exercise balls. In the United States, its popularity has grown in the past two years, said Clapp and Sarah Robichaud, the book's co-author.
"The toughest part of ball-sitting at the office is getting used to the comments from co-workers," said Denise Valente, a personal trainer who recommends balls as chairs to her Racine clients.
"You've got to get through all the jokes out there," Valente said. "Sometimes, the first in fashion is the worst place to be."
I found a
couple of websites,
which also sell
exercise balls.
Hope you are having a ball until my next newsletter at the end of September!
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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