Do you live in a state that is too liberal and/or oppressive? Have you given any thought to moving to a state that is more in line with your values? More and more people are doing just that; voting with their feet. In this article I’ll cover some of my own struggles and list some resources that might help anyone else who might want to move to another state. I also ask any of you who might have input to please add it, so that those of us considering voting with our feet and moving to a new state might have an easier time of it.
As some of you might be aware Trudee and I started looking for a new home last fall. The goals were a lower house payment and, hopefully, ten acres or more. We haven’t had much luck, mostly due to the fact that I work from home and need a low latency high speed Internet connection. Since we’re looking in more rural areas because we want 5+ acres, satellite is often the only option and satellite just won’t work for my job.
We started looking for houses on ten or more acres and dropped it down to five when we weren’t finding anything. We started to find some properties, but as soon as we would tell our Realtor to book a showing, she would tell us they accepted an offer. We have now gotten to the point where there isn’t a single house on the MLS in our price range, with any acreage, that doesn’t require extensive fixing up.
I’ve grumbled about not liking Minnesota for years. It’s just too liberal for me. Last week Trudee made a comment along the lines of “maybe this is God’s way of telling us we should move out of state.” I’ll not get into the reasons why I want to move out of Minnesota, as that isn’t what this article is about. If you’re truly interested, send me an email or post in the comments.
We had a couple serious conversations about it. We did a bit of research to find which states are more conservative and found this poll from Gallup ranking the top ten most conservative and liberal states. Last week, Jack Spirko from The Survival Podcast talked about this subject in a listener question episode 1078. He also mentioned he was starting a new forum called Walking to Freedom, a place that will list ten of the most oppressive states and ten of the most liberty loving states. This forum will be a place to speak to others in states you’re looking to move to and from.
Jack posted an article titled “You Don’t Have To Live Like This” the next day. In it the author is telling his readers that many people are leaving states that are not business friendly for states that are. He lives in Florida and is making a case for people to move there.
Looking for a house in Minnesota is hard enough! We look on the MLS, take a look at the property on Google Maps to make sure it’s something that meets our requirements and then I check to see if high speed Internet is available. If it is, we ask the realtor to book a showing. We’re often told that the seller, often a bank, has accepted an offer. I have a hunch that people are making offers without seeing the house in person because Trudee keeps a close eye on the MLS. The houses that we do go see are often not a place we would live for various reasons.
How Do You Vote With Your Feet?
In Minnesota, I know the parts of the state that are more rural, the parts that are a little too rural and have a general area of where we would like to live. Researching another state would be a must, and this is where a forum like Walking to Freedom will come in very handy.
Let’s say you find an area you would like to live and even find a house for sale. How do you go through this process when you can’t go see the house in person? Once you find the house, Google Maps is a huge time saver. We have used it to rule out several homes.
We went to see seven or so houses, and after seeing them in person we ruled five out. One was ruled out due to lack of internet and one we were out bid on. My point is that the realtors put the best pictures of a house on the MLS. We had to set foot in five to rule them out. How would you go about ruling out houses? Trudee mentioned possibly finding a realtor willing to walk through the house with a smart phone running Skype or a similar program that would let us see the house and interact with the realtor. Can you think of any other options?
If you work from home and need an Internet connection with less latency than Satellite, finding a viable ISP may be problematic as well. It took me a week or two of searching to get familiar with the Internet Service Providers that service different parts of the state I live in. Just doing a Google search often only yields the big names like Comcast or Century Link, and might not list a perfectly viable but smaller ISP. I have found a newer technology called WIMAX, which is a wireless connection, sent much like a cellular signal. Since these WIMAX antennae are often located on water towers or other things of similar height, the signal doesn’t have to travel to a satellite and you can see speeds of 5+ Mbps with low latency.
Because of our situation, we may end up staying in Minnesota. Heck, we may end up staying where we live now! What about those of you who live in states that don’t hold the same values you do? Would you consider voting with your feet?
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