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Newsletter from Montana
February 2005
Our vacation rental in Germany was in the new part of town, which was built around 1650. The old part was built in 1150 or so under "Heinrich der Löwe." Löwe in German means "lion" and in just about every city in Germany you will find a lion statue, because "Henry the Lion" founded or re-established most of them and took special care to colonize Northern Germany under his reign.
If you like older homes, I listed a home from 1900 in Old Town Red Lodge across from Rock Creek. In German we would say "Klein aber Oho!" which would translate to "Small but full of pleasant surprises!" Ten years back a master carpenter got a hold of it and not only restored it to its original beauty but added some space with the same amount of patina to match the old part. There are 100 year old oak floors, clear fir floors, relief wallpaper on the ceiling, bay windows upstairs with view of Rock Creek and besides three bedrooms and two baths, a roomy kitchen with a commercial grade range. French Doors lead to a deck with Jacuzzi, a double garage and shed. If you like to listen to a mountain brook while you go to sleep at night and still be right in town, this home is for you! The owner and artisan is Dave Malin, who also built my office, our pilot's lounge, the matching garage to our Colonial home - if he would have done it for free, we couldn't have been more pleased! If you like to have something built, give him a call 406/855 6972 or send him an
email DAVE.MALIN@worldnet.att.net
If you would like a log home build or a home with log accents, contact Mark Smed. He built the little cabin on the cliff in Sheep Mountain Ranch, he built a custom log home with hand peeled logs in Luther, both of which I have sold. Also if you take a look at the Deppmeier House, Mark did all the log work there. His phone numbers are 406/425 1590 cell and at home 406/446 3766 or send him an email loghomes@wtp.net
There is even such a thing as a log home lender, he sent me an email: "My name is Scott Clark and I am President and Owner of 'Log Lenders of America'. My company specializes in financing log homes nationwide. I thought we might be able to assist you with
financing for any of your buyers of log homes in your area.
* No log home comps required for the appraisals.
* Up to 100% financing available for persons with 700 or higher credit score.
* Stated Income programs available with as little as 5% down."
email scott@loglenders.net
Phone: 1-888-880-LOGS (5647) Fax: 512-255-9478 Cell: 512-470-4015
There used to be a shallow ocean between the Beartooth Mountains, the Pryors and the Big Horns. It was a salty sea and in some places, you can see white stuff laying around on the surface, which is alkaline, a form of salt. Needless to say when you see that, the ground is not producing much of anything. But the glitch in the landscape does not stop there. When you go to the low lying areas such as Belfry, Deaver and other assorted areas in Wyoming the water that comes out of the well you have drilled is a tad salty. Then filters are needed to get the worst out of it, and for drinking water you need to buy bottled water or haul water. There are of course aquifers, underground rivers, that come out of the mountains and if you can tap into one of those instead of the other groundwater, you got it made. You will have good tasting water, and plenty of it. The farther you get away from the mountains, the less water your well will pump with very few exceptions, hence the prices for properties close to the mountains are at a premium. This was a nice way of saying that the prices for the Sheep Mountain Ranch changed effective March 1st as follows:
Tract A to $ 169,000 - 20 acres
Tract 8 to $ 319,000 - 41.5 acres
Tract 6 to $ 312,000 - 41 acres
The roads will be cut starting in March. Now THAT would be the place to build a log home! The trail into the National Forest from there leads you along a ridge and you can see for a 100 miles. It is the perfect place for hikers and horseback riding.
If you are planning on moving here this spring, take a look at this:
Ricochet Films are the British producers of a successful documentary series "No Going Back". In previous series, they have followed British families who are buying an olive farm in Tuscany, renovating a chateau hotel in France, or moving to rural Spain to make a living from a smallholding. They have also just been commissioned by Discovery US to make an American version of the series, following American families moving to the wilderness, so they are keen to talk with US families making this move too!
They traditionally film with people who are: Families - parents in their 30s or 40s, ideally with kids heading into the country to take on something radically different - leaving a desk job to take on a rural business or tourism/leisure business, etc. Classic examples would be families who are buying a farmstead, renovating a historic hotel, or moving to a rural place to make a living from a smallholding.
The family should be moving somewhere, which is new to them, where they do not have any major contacts such as family or friends. They need to be chasing a dream - heading off for a better quality of life. The lifestyle is as important as the business side. Good characters doing something really ambitious or aspirational - taking on big life challenges. Planning big building projects - either renovating their new property into holiday lets/hotels, or building a whole new complex, or taking on an old property which needs loads of work. Ideally they would like to film with people who are heading out in Spring this year. They are aiming to get the series on air this time next year, and normally need at least 9 months of filming. So, they need to start meeting possible contributors ASAP, really.
All the families who have participated in previous series have found that their new businesses have benefited enormously, with bookings going through the roof as soon as the programs are aired. The series itself has regularly attracted between 3-4 million viewers, and they also make a point of organizing links from the Channel 4 website to their contributor's businesses and to the company who helped them find the family. This link goes up once the shows are aired. If you are interested, call James Christie-Miller in England 01144 207 251 6966 if you have any further queries. In the meanwhile, you can find more details of all their programs at
James Christie-Miller, Producer, Ricochet Films, Cairo Studios, 4 Nile Street, London N1 7RF
or email: james.christiemiller@ricochet.co.uk
Tell him I told you to contact him.
On my website for jobs I added some links for nurses. The sites are:
travel nursing
online nursing jobs
nursing jobs
You probably already know, that when you sell a property you can defer the taxes on the profit if you do a 1031 exchange. I just thought I mention it, there are still people out there who are afraid to sell their investment property, second home, farm, etc because of the tax consequences. Also many people seem to think you still have to exchange like for like, that is not true anymore, either. You can exchange any type of investment property for any other type of investment property and you can buy several small properties if you sell a large parcel.
Take a look at the
Intelius website. Type in your name and cringe! Great if you want to find out more about a person, though.
Do you want to know how many people link to your e-mail? Go to
Google
and type in "links: you@domain.com" (without the quotation marks). The results will tell you how many people link to your e-mail. This also works for web pages. A link to my domain, montanahereicome.com, appears on 396 pages around the web, including one, which claims that I have properties for sale in Bulgaria - holy smokes! At any rate, a great way to snoop out your competition or to find out if your old email address is still mentioned and needs to be changed to your new email address.
If you would like to buy a space picture of your home, visit
Globe Explorer or
Tera Server
If you like to see pictures of the places we visited in Germany, here are some websites:
Schloss Wernigerode
Quedlinburg
Burg Regenstein
Schloss Schwerin
Lüneburg
Hamburg
Ratzeburg
Goslar
Lübeck
This site shows all the Castles in Germany:
Burgen und Schlösser
We stayed in Ratzeburg, which was a stopover on the old salt road from the salt mines in Lüneburg to Lübeck. We enjoyed Lübeck, one of those independent trade cities of the North. The trade cities were run by the merchants and were not under the influence of the Kaiser in the olden days. During a medieval siege the citizens of Lübeck ran out of flour, and resorted to ground almonds for baking and so marzipan came into existence. The marzipan company "Niederegger"
located in Lübeck cranks out 30,000 metric tons of marzipan a day! The almonds are shipped in from the Mediterranean, and the marzipan of course is shipped all over the world.
The exchange rate for the Euro was about $ 1.30 for one Euro. We paid € 385 for our vacation rental (off season for 3 people) for 10 nights.
You could also work a home exchange, which would save you the trouble and expense of renting a car and paying for accommodations all together. That worked well for us in the past. The family from the other country lives in your home and uses your car while taking care of your pets and you do the same in their house abroad. We did not do that this time, because my husband stayed home and I didn't want anybody else taking care of him! :-)
To keep you through the month of March until my next newsletter, here is
AN IRISH FRIENDSHIP WISH
May there always be work for your hands to do;
May your purse always hold a coin or two;
May the sun always shine on your windowpane;
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;
May the hand of a friend always be near you;
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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