For readers who are not familiar with my blog, I began writing articles in 2016 to describe what had happened during the 2007-2015 Oil Boom in North Dakota. It took me at least three years of writing to explain the cultural differences, hostility, unfriendliness, difficulty, unpleasantness, hardships, price-gouging, and out-of-state workers being taken advantage of.

I first came to work in North Dakota in 2011. My goal was to make enough money to pay-off all of my bills, and save-up enough money to return to my home in Idaho. Back in 2008, this was the beginning of the “housing-bubble burst”, followed by nation-wide housing foreclosures, the failure of financial securities called “mortgage-derivatives”, then Bank failures, then Federal Government Bank-bailouts. The economies in every U.S. state were damaged. By 2009, thousands of people from every state were travelling to North Dakota to try to work in the Oil Field, because there was high unemployment everywhere else.

It was a good thing that an Oil Boom had begun in North Dakota in 2007, primarily because a newer technology called hydraulic-fracturing was allowing previously hard-to-flow oil to be extracted. It allowed me and several hundred thousand out-of-state workers to pay for our houses, families, and debts back home for as long as we could stand working here.

There was an intentional over-hyping and over-selling of the idea that, “Everyone is making over $100,000 per year working in the oil field.” This was done to flood North Dakota with workers in order to keep wage-rates low, and to take advantage of out-of-state workers through price-gouging on everything, food, housing, services. This led to people paying $700 per month to rent a pup-tent in a local person’s backyard, or sleeping in a Walmart parking lot or park for months at a time.

I am not going to re-tell all of the very bad things that I went through in North Dakota, because it would take too long. From 20011-2019, I never got far enough ahead money-wise, to get out of travelling to North Dakota for work. At least I was able to earn enough money to keep my house in Idaho.

In 2020, my father died. He left me enough money to where I could have quit travelling to North Dakota for work, but I had a good job that I liked very much at that time, so I bought a very small house for $50K to stay in while I was working in North Dakota. At least I could finally enjoy owning a place of my own in North Dakota, and not have to be subject to landlords, room-mates, bad neighbors, rent-increases.

Meanwhile, in Idaho, due to people fleeing California, the price of real estate in Idaho was increasing steadily and rapidly. By 2018, there were frequently nation-wide newspaper articles about how local people in Boise, Idaho were being priced-out of housing. The average wage in Boise was something like $11-$12 per hour, but the average house price had gone from $250K to $350K in less than three years. (The data I looked up just now, $244K average house price in 2016, versus $345K in 2019 for Ada County Idaho.)

In the area of Idaho where my house is located, when I was home in 2019, a couple of my neighbors boasted that you could easily find a $15/hr job now locally. That might not seem like a lot of money to many readers, but that was a livable wage in that area of Idaho at that time. However, even though I could have lived on $15/hr in Idaho, this was much less than what myself and the majority of people in working in western North Dakota were being paid.

2020-2023, I watched the real estate sites like Zillow, Trulia, and others increase the estimated value of my house back in Idaho up to as much as $380K. If I had wanted to sell my house, the Summer of 2022 seemed to be the peak of the Idaho housing frenzy. The 80-acre hay field across the street from my house had been recently and very quickly turned into a housing development with a dozen new $450K-$650K homes already completed.

But I didn’t want to sell my house, or need to sell my house. I didn’t like the new housing development across the street from me though. It was changing both the character and population density of this area. All of the houses on my side of the street, were on at least five acres, not 1/2-acre lots like the new development. And, most of the people on my side of the street, owned travel trailers, utility trailers, horse trailers, farm trucks, commercial tractor-trucks, dump-trucks, front-end-loaders, and other construction equipment that was kept on their property. I feared that it was only a matter of time before myself and my neighbors began receiving letters from the County ordering us to remove our “junk”, because of pressure from our new neighbors with $650K houses.

But in the end, as it turned out, it wasn’t becoming broke, or injured, or sick, or being forced out by complaints from new housing developments with affluent home owners, that caused me to sell my house that I had struggled to keep for the past ten years, ……..it was the Marmots.

Partly due to the recent and quick development of the 80 acres across the street, and a couple of other close-by developments to the north and northwest of my property, the Marmots in the area fled to my property because often no one was home at the time, they were being left alone for the time-being on my property.

This Spring, I saw that some Marmots had spent a great deal of time chewing at the siding on my house at the entry-way, beside the front door, trying to get inside the house. What stopped them, was the amount of extra framing studs at the entry-way. If the Marmots would have gotten through the exterior wall, I estimate that they would have done about $20K damage to the furniture, cabinets, drywall, plumbing, and electrical wiring.

At my well-pump-house, I could see that the Marmots had gotten into the upper-level above-ground portion of the well-house. I was shocked at the amount of damage that had been done. I saw that the Marmots had also pulled open the hatch to the basement, and down in the basement they had destroyed all of the electrical wiring, and had buried all of the well-piping, controls, and gauges, which I believed had also been destroyed.

I knew at that moment, that I needed to sell this house. I can’t be here all the time. Even if I fixed everything, once I left, the Marmots would be at it again. I was very lucky that the Marmots had not made it inside the house. Could I afford $20K-$30K damage every time I left? No.

I had a several long conversations with the owner of my current insurer agency. My homeowner’s insurance did not cover any kind of damage to my house or well-pump-house caused by animals. On four of my vehicles that I had parked at my house, I had “comprehensive coverage while being stored”. Three of these vehicles had some damage, probably less than my $500 insurance deductible. But a fourth vehicle that was insured, and a fifth vehicle that was not insured, were in the range of “total-loss” from Marmot damage. In the photo below, just about all of the electrical wiring, and most of the fuel, coolant, vacuum, and hydraulic hoses are gone:

I got a recommendation for a real estate agent from a retired local insurance company owner that I had known for more than ten years. The following day, this realtor came over to my house with a list of thirteen recent home sales in this area with the same type of house. The lowest recent sale was about $250K for a house on less than one acre. The remaining twelve recent comparable home sales were all over $300K, and went up to $550K.

In my initial discussion with this real estate agent, he seemed competent and intelligent, and he appeared to be thinking the same things that I was, as I explained the situation to him. The following day, when I asked this real estate agent about requiring 1%-3% earnest money from a potential buyer who wished to submit an offer, I was puzzled at his statement, “Oh no. We don’t want to prevent some buyers from being able to make the down payment.” I was thinking, “WTF, not being able to make the down payment??? What kind of people are you talking about?” This was the beginning of things going wrong with this house sale.

I will explain in my next blog post, my initial disbelief and bewilderment at this realtor and his real estate agency seemingly setting-aside my property for HUD/FHA buyers who were low-income and lacked the ability to make the required down-payment, on a $325K property. Why?