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Two-bedroom home in Anaconda, Montana, for $18,900. That's what the ad said, and we had to go see. We had been driving around the country for six weeks in 2002, exploring affordable places to buy a home. The moment we drove into town we liked it, and we bought the home for $17,500 the next day, after looking at several other similarly-priced homes.
The house had a full basement, a garage with opener, hardwood floors and a sunroom. How's that for affordable? We sold the home five months later for a small profit and moved on to places with better jobs. Two years later we started our website on cheap houses, HousesUnderFiftyThousand.com, based on our experience touring the country looking at towns to live in. Anaconda became the centerpiece of the site.
Now we have an internet business that allows us to live where we want, and we live in Colorado. But through the years we've wondered whether Anaconda had been "discovered." We were curious enough to drive the 900 miles to see, so as I write this, I'm sitting in our room above the Harp and Thistle Inn looking out at downtown Anaconda, and up at the surrounding mountains.
Anaconda - A Beautiful
And Affordable Town
We came into town yesterday, Tuesday afternoon, August 7, 2007. It looked the same initially, but then we saw Rocky Mountain Brewing, a new brew pub. They have great food we are told, which we will try to verify later. There are other new businesses here and there, but what surprised us most was that almost all the businesses we had thought would fail when we left town five years ago are still here.
We went to the visitor's center. A new dinner train travels the twenty miles of hills between Anaconda and Butte, we were told. After mentioning our previous home to the the lady at the desk, she told her own story about buying a house for $13,000 three years ago. After she got tired of fixing it up, she sold it for $20,000 and bought another. The really cheap houses are all fixer-uppers now, she explained. Home prices had at least doubled in the last five years.
We took a real estate guide and went to Washoe Park, where we parked in the shade and laid in the Van for an hour looking over the current listings. Someone had parked their RV on the grass nearby, apparently camping right there in the city park - Anaconda was apparently still easy-going enough for that (when we lived here people who came for a softball tournament camped in the park). Prices had gone up we noticed, but there were still five houses under $50,000, and the sixth listing was $60,000 for two small houses, one with all new siding and paint. However, when we drove by the homes, they all appeared to be fixer-uppers. There were a couple nice homes ready to live in for under $100,000, but the days of realy cheap houses in Anaconda are over.
Still, even at twice the price, the homes here are still affordable, and the town itself is cheap to live in. After getting our room, we walked to the Classic Cafe on Park Avenue, a cafe/restaurant/bar (there are a lot of these combinations in Anaconda) to use the wireless internet connection. An hour or two of work, a large basket of french fries, three beers (me) and two cups of herbal tea (Ana), and we asked for the bill.
It was $8.25! Beers are $1.25 each, tea $1, and the the fries $2.50. That's the Anaconda we remembered. Today we'll have to see if the McDonalds still has 25-cent coffee after five years. The meals are cheap, the groceries are cheap, and entertainment is cheap as well. The Washoe Theater (classic art-deco - one of the most beuatiful theaters in the country) is just $4, so we may go see a movie later tonight.
This was just our first afternoon and evening in town. Today we might drive into the mountains, to a little lake we love, down a dirt road at about 8,000 feet altitude. It's one of the more beautiful places around, but we'll keep the location our own little secret for now. The bottom line is that Anaconda still has cheap houses, a low cost of living, and is a beautiful place to live.
For more on the real estate situation, see the page, Anaconda Montana is Discovered.