North Dakota oil boom fuels real estate sales in Arizona
By Matthew Staver, Bloomberg News
By Matthew Staver, Bloomberg News
Oil production has spurred construction in Williston, N.D., above, but many residents are finding more for the money in Arizona.
Search over 3,000,000 Jobs Now.
Find a Job in North Dakota!
"It boils down to the weather and taking advantage of the market," says real estate agent Rocky Parra of HomeSmart Realty in Gilbert, Ariz., a Phoenix suburb.
He and wife Beverly, a native of Minot, N.D., have sold eight homes to North Dakotans in recent months. Parra is heading to North Dakota this month to meet with possible buyers.
"A lot of people have struck it rich," he says. "Oil companies are coming in and buying businesses and land. They're selling up there at the peak and buying down here at the bottom."
Some want second homes. Others move outright.
Blaine Bjella, 41, still owns three auto body and truck accessories businesses in his native Williston, N.D., the hub of the state's oil bonanza, which has pushed the state's unemployment rate to the lowest level in the nation (3.4%).
When an oil company made him an offer for the 6 acres that his log home sat on, he couldn't refuse. He moved his wife and three sons to a lake cabin he owns while they looked for a new house.
High demand is causing a shortage of real estate in western North Dakota. That inspired Bjella to look south, where his father-in-law lives.
"I saw what you could get for the dollar, and we bought a house here in Mesa," Bjella says.
The Bjellas found their dream home on an Arizona mountaintop: a new 8,000-square-foot estate in the Usery Mountains with pool and guest house on 1 acre with a panoramic view of Phoenix, Mesa and Scottsdale. The mansion was on sale for $5 million at the peak of the market, but Bjella bought it earlier this year for $2.1 million cash and moved his family.
"They really love it," he says on a recent December day when temperatures hovered near 60 degrees (barely 30 in Williston). "And it was an investment for me. … It was a very, very good deal."
Bjella goes back to North Dakota for a week each month to oversee his businesses, and he has bought 10 acres outside Williston to consolidate his shops on one site. He knows of more than 50 North Dakotans who are buying homes in the Phoenix area, where median housing prices (half are more and half are less) have fallen almost 55% since their peak of $264,100 in June 2006, according to DataQuick.
Not everyone is paying millions, Parra says. He has sold everything from homes costing about $200,000 to multimillion-dollar estates in gated communities.
The weather and bargain prices are drawing many more North Dakotans now because small towns are overrun with oilfield workers sleeping in cars, motels or "man camps," compounds of modular, temporary housing for predominantly male oil workers.
"The oil boom has changed the way of life," says Mark Schill, an economic development consultant with Praxis Strategy Group in Grand Forks, N.D. "The region has become fairly congested, with 15 to 20 oil trucks backed up (on roads)."
Williston grew 15% over the past decade, a big jump for a town that still has fewer than 15,000 residents.
"Williston is overrun," Bjella says. "The traffic … it's tough to get around."
