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Newsletter from Montana
November 2005
Exiting times, my first agent has hired on with me! His name is Tony Lopez and you can read his biography and see his photo on my website
Tony and his wife Ann celebrated Thanksgiving with us and I must say, Tony is married to an outstanding cook! Their children are grown and they moved here from the Seattle area. They own a little ranchette just north of the Wyoming border along the Clark's Fork River and Tony is looking forward to helping you with your real estates hopes and dreams for Montana or Wyoming. His email is TonyLopez@vcn.com and his cell phone is 406/425 1865
The log home with the barn (it has three fireplaces!) on 40 acres six miles north of town has reduced the price to $ 585,000 -
The views are amazing!
The
horse motel reduced the price to $ 435,000 - home, barn and corrals on 13 acres in Billings just a mile off the Interstate.
On my listing in Fromberg the house and 40 acres sold, which leaves us with
107 acres along the Clark's Fork River for $ 450,000 Most of the property is in the floodplain, which does not mean that the river will visit you in your living room, it just means that the groundwater level is high and a basement might not be a good idea. The upper parcel is a dedicated agricultural tract and therefore cannot have a dwelling on it. The parcels are separated by a landlocked 5 acres parcel. It is not suitable for development, but certainly would make a nice homesite with all those big trees and mountain views to boot, only 30 minutes from Billings and 45 minutes from Red Lodge.
Then we have a
cabin on 8.8 acres. It has a beautiful mountain view and is located half way between Red Lodge and Billings. Just $ 139,000, because there is part of a mobile home inside, which needs to get out of there. The land is worth that much, if you consider it has a well and a septic installed. I posted the floorplan and the proposed floorplan for it on the website.
Paradise Meadows is a brand new subdivision about 7 miles north of town with spectacular views, trees along the perimeter and irrigation streams. I took some photos for you to see. 5.79 acres - lot 18 - $ 97,500 - is the cheapest.
If you like to do a subdivision yourself in this neighborhood, I have
165 acres for sale for $ 695,000 If you would divide this into 6 acres lots there, the road would cost you $ 260,000 - I just received a bid for it. To put the utilities to each lot would be another $ 75,000 +survey, but theoretically you could get $ 2,500,000 back on your original investment. Not only that, but the property has a barn with living quarters, well and septic, so you and your horse have a place to stay while you wait for your money to double :-)
If you rather have all that space for yourself and want to build a nice home, the Lindal Homes dealer in Billings has retired, and we now we have an independent dealer for
Lindal Cedar Homes (Beartooth Cedar Homes, Inc) right here in Red Lodge. Lindal sells kits, which you can have built or build yourself. By the time it is all said and done it will cost you $145 to $195 per sqft for such a cedar home, but the quality seems to be outstanding and cedar homes certainly keep the bugs at bay. . Our local representative here is Diana Simon
1025 S. Broadway, Red Lodge, MT 59068-1875, 406-446-2066 - Office, 406-425-2098 - Cell, 888-551-4242 - Toll Free
In case you are planning to build a spec home, remodel or build for a later resale, keep in mind that today's homebuyers are looking for less formality and more comfort. The kitchen's boundaries with other rooms continue to blur. A layout that is completely open between the kitchen, dining area and great room are at the top of many consumers' lists. The great room is replacing the living room as the gathering place for family and friends. The formal dining room is declining in popularity. The master bathroom needs to be connected to the master bedroom and serves as a mini-spa with amenities such as saunas, steam rooms, jetted tub, heated floors and towel racks, walk-in showers and multi-media entertainment centers. Extra bedrooms are often converted to home offices or dens. Locating the washer and dryer closer to the bedrooms continues to become more popular. Soaring ceilings at least in some rooms are a must and so are fireplaces and a bright open feeling. Hardwood floors and tile are more popular than carpet. Granite, copper or tiles are fashionable for counter tops. Homes that do not meet most of these criteria can often only be sold at a discount and sometimes have to be sold below market value, which is heartbreaking for the homeowners, because to them their house is still a wonderful home and they don't understand why their home isn't selling at the price they think it should. Also a nice front entrance and door make a world of a difference for the appeal of a home and any money you spend on this project will return into your pocket fourfold when you are selling.
In the West, existing home sales keep rising. After Washington, the next highest increase in the region was in Montana, where sales rose 13.9 percent compared with a year earlier; Wyoming sales were up 13.7 percent and Utah increased 9.7 percent. Home sales activity of course stimulates the U.S. economy for all related services, including manufacturing of furniture, appliances, flooring, fixtures, etc and creating new jobs. Overall the housing sector accounts for about a quarter of total economic activity in the U.S. And the growth in household wealth from homeownership translates into higher levels of consumer spending which helps other segments of the economy.
The 2005 Montana Legislature passed
House Bill 22 to accelerate statewide water rights adjudication. HB22 requires every water right owner in the state to pay $20 every two years per water right for the next ten years. Using DNRC ownership records, invoices will be sent every two years starting in December 2005 from the Department of Revenue. The accuracy of the DNRC records will affect how much you have to pay.
As you might have heard, we had a
carbon monoxide incident here at the Rock Creek Resort. Carbon monoxide is an odorless gas that is produced by any gas heater or water heater (internal combustion) and vented to the outside. The vent at the resort malfunctioned. Carbon monoxide went unnoticed through the heat ducts and many people passed out during a formal event honoring Marines returned from Iraq. It is a terrifying thing when ladies in evening gowns and Marines in uniform, fall forward into their dinner plate, passing out. Carbon monoxide is not poisonous itself, but replaces the oxygen your body needs and if you pass out you will die, unless somebody else did not pass out, gets you into the fresh air and an ambulance brings you oxygen to make up for lost time.
Also be cautious in your camper, the same can happen there. It is not the law, but certainly one heck of a good idea to install a carbon monoxide detector in your home, business and camper. If it saves the lives of your loved ones, you'll be glad you read this newsletter and made the effort and do not bring the grill inside to heat the house, it is not vented....
Carbon Monoxide detectors make an excellent Christmas Present for everyone you know!
Just across the border in Wyoming and around Cody Grizzly Bears can be detected, also.
The Grizzly Bears made an astounding come back. They weigh less than a pound when they're born, but a diet from berries to bison make some adult grizzly bears heavier than a thousand pounds. Once endangered, their numbers in the Yellowstone Park area have increased from 200 to 600 during the last 30 years. Now the government is considering taking
Grizzlies around the Yellowstone off the endangered species list. It were the fierce encounters with humans that caused their population to dwindle in the first place, but so far we did not see any here around Red Lodge and the forest to the north of the Park.
Other wild things to watch out for are volcanoes. I added another link to my Yellowstone margin, showing
Current volcanic activity around the globe. It does not look like our earth is sitting still. Our Yellowstone hot spot has interacted with the North American plate for perhaps as long as 17 million years, causing widespread outpourings of basalt that bury about 200,000 square miles in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Idaho under stacks of lava flows half a mile or more thick. Some of the basaltic melt, or magma, produced by the hot spot accumulates near the base of the plate, where its heat melts rocks from the Earth's lower crust. These melts, in turn, rise closer to the surface to form large reservoirs of potentially explosive rhyolite magma. Catastrophic eruptions have partly emptied some of these reservoirs, causing their roofs to collapse. The resulting craters, some of which are more than 30 miles (50 kilometers) across, are known as volcanic calderas. Because the plate was moving an inch or so per year southwestward over the hot spot for millions of years as the calderas formed, groups of calderas are
strung out like beads on a string across parts of Idaho and Wyoming.
The most recent caldera-forming eruption about 650,000 years ago produced a caldera 53 x 28 miles (85 x 45 kilometers) across in what is now our
Yellowstone National Park. During that eruption, flows of hot volcanic ash, pumice, and gases swept across an area of more than 3,000 square miles. These enormous pyroclastic flows solidified to form a layer of rock called the Lava Creek Tuff, which has been exposed by erosion at
Tuff Cliff, a popular Yellowstone attraction along the lower Gibbon River.
The eruption also shot a column of volcanic ash and gases high into Earth's stratosphere. This volcanic cloud circled the globe many times and affected Earth's climate by reducing the intensity of solar radiation reaching the lower atmosphere and surface. Fine volcanic ash that fell downwind from the eruption site blanketed much of North America. This ash layer is still preserved in deposits as far away as Iowa, where it is a few inches thick, and the Gulf of Mexico, where it is recognizable in drill cores from the sea floor. Lava flows have since buried and obscured most of the caldera, but the underlying processes responsible for Yellowstone's tremendous volcanic eruptions are still at work. Eventually, another "bead" may be added to Yellowstone's 300-mile-long string of calderas, with global consequences that are beyond human experience and impossible to anticipate fully. In the meantime, the giant is releasing pressure with thousands of small earthquakes which rattle the Yellowstone region each year. Most of these are too small to be noticed except by sensitive seismometers, but a few are large enough to cause substantial damage. At least eight magnitude-6 or greater earthquakes have occurred in the Yellowstone region during recorded time. The largest of these was the magnitude-7.5 Hebgen Lake earthquake on August 18, 1959, which cost 28 lives and $11 million in damage. The most recent was a magnitude-6.1 earthquake near the Norris geyser basin on June 30, 1975.
Earthquakes are not the only way to release pressure. Yellowstone's famous hydrothermal system releases heat energy at an average rate of about 4,500 megawatts. In addition, repeated surveys show that the ground surface near the center of the Yellowstone caldera rose more than 3 feet from 1923 to 1985, then subsided about 6 inches from 1985 to 1992. Studies of shorelines near the outlet of Yellowstone Lake show that the caldera's center has risen and fallen 3 times during the past 10,000 years. The total vertical change during each "breath" of the caldera is estimated to be about 65 feet.
The current rates of seismicity, ground deformation, and hydrothermal activity at Yellowstone, although high by most geologic standards, are probably typical of long time periods between eruptions and therefore not a reason for immediate concern. Potentially damaging earthquakes are likely to continue occurring every few decades, as they have in the recent past. Eventually Yellowstone will erupt again, but there is no indication that an eruption is imminent or what kind of eruption may come next. For the foreseeable future, the same powerful forces that created Yellowstone will continue to animate this slumbering, but fidgety, volcanic giant.
There is a webpage
"awesome science for teens"
Somebody sent me this advertisement from Budweiser, not that I endorse beer, but I thought this was just
plain snow fun.
Those are
inspiring e-cards. You could put your favorite wisdom quote in there and send it to your friends maybe even with the sound of the flute ("Playful Instrumental by Angelika")
I wish you a wonderful Christmas Season and hope you can be together with most of your loved ones!
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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