The Next Hot Neighborhood: Rural America
In June, 40-year-old Shane Dawley and his 36-year-old wife, Rhonda, uprooted themselves and their four boys from their suburban Atlanta rental home and bought an old five-acre farm in Ogdensburg, Wisc. Their goal: Flee the rat race and adopt a more self-reliant lifestyle amid the troubled economy.
While Mr. Dawley, who had worked at a parking garage, hasn’t found a full-time job yet, he’s been working on nearby farms learning new skills (one person paid him with an old John Deere tractor), and his family is raising chickens while learning to garden and hunt.
“Our generation has never seen anything like this,” says Mr. Dawley of the economic downturn. “Fear sometimes is a good thing and will push you to do things you ordinarily wouldn’t.”
While urban and suburban real estate is still generally under pressure, the rural market is holding up better in many areas, thanks in part to buyers such as the Dawleys. Sometimes dubbed “ruralpolitans,” these city and town dwellers are looking at land as their new safe investment, one they hope could prove more stable than their jobs and 401(k)s—and provide a better lifestyle.
Motivations can vary, but typically there are three groups: young people buying land as an asset or investment, with vague hopes to live on it someday; exurban commuters who have jobs in big towns or cities but want to escape the sprawl; and back-to-the-land types who want to dabble in hobby farming. While the 76 million-strong baby boomers eyeing retirement represent the largest ruralpolitan segment, they’re being joined by a growing contingent of 20-to-early-40-somethings freshly imprinted by this recession’s pain.
Kathryn O’Shea-Evans, a 25-year-old freelance writer, moved from Portland, Ore., to New York on Dec. 31, 2006. When the economy began floundering, she was frugal—living in a $650-a-month boarding-house room, buying clothing in resale shops, and socking away part of each paycheck.
Then, this past August, she flew to Montana to look at a place to invest those savings: a $12,000, 12-acre parcel of land.
“From the minute I landed in New York City, every job I’ve had I’ve been worried will end any moment,” says Ms. O’Shea-Evans, who is now working on a “permalance” basis as an editorial assistant at Travel + Leisure magazine. She passed on the 12 acres but is continuing her rural-property search. “It’s totally worth it to put every extra dime into buying something that I will know is there,” she says. She is now looking for something with a house on it.
At United Country Real Estate Inc., one of the country’s largest real estate groups dedicated to rural properties, the average residential sale price climbed 7% last year from 2006 levels, before the recession began. This year, says the firm, based in Kansas City, Mo., prices are expected to be up 2% from 2006. That’s compared to an expected 22% median price decline nationally in existing single-family homes in 2009 from 2006 levels, as tracked by the National Association of Realtors——a drop exacerbated by the number of distressed homes sold at discount.