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00000176-d8fc-dce8-adff-faff71570000The Boise-metro market was hardest hit in Idaho's housing crisis, with foreclosures concentrated in Ada and Canyon Counties.Idaho’s housing boom was centered around its two main metropolitan areas, Boise and Coeur d’Alene.John Starr of the global real estate company Colliers International had a front-row seat as capital poured into the local housing markets in the years preceding the bust.When he thinks of the early 2000s, he remembers watching land prices rise with demand, and house lots shrink. What the area wound up with, he says, were more and more subdivisions, packed tight with houses.Census data show that the state’s population grew by more than 28 percent from 1990 to 2000, and by more than 20 percent from 2000 to 2010. Starr said that's due in large part to growth at Micron Technology. That growth, in turn, fueled Idaho's housing boom.“The reason we were doubling the national average growth rate was we were moving in a whole bunch of people that we couldn’t produce here in Idaho, namely electrical engineers and so forth to work at Micron. The data points that people were looking at that were helping them make decisions about coming to Boise and deploying capital and building and helping us grow – those data points were skewed.” - John Starr, Colliers InternationalAccording to Metrostudy, a housing and data information company, Boise’s housing market began to bottom out in 2009.

3 Idaho Cities Make List Of Best Ski Towns For Real Estate Investing

John Milner
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Flickr Creative Commons
This is a skier's view from Ketchum's Bald Mountain.

When it comes to determining America's best ski towns, it's not always about the best powder or accommodations. 

For the second year, real estate information company RealtyTrac has published a list of the best ski towns for investing. Three Idaho spots make this year’s list. 

So if you want to buy a cozy Idaho cabin or swank condo - with making money in mind - RealtyTrac recommends Ketchum, Sandpoint or Donnelly. In the first ski town investing list last year, Ketchum was the only Idaho city to make the cut.

RealtyTrac used seven factors to create the list. There are community considerations, things like distance from an airport and the town's unemployment rate. Then there are more wonky real estate things like annual home price appreciation and gross rent yield.  Foreclosure rate and median home price are also factors.

But you can’t ignore the actual skiing if you’re investing in a ski town. The final category RealtyTrac uses for its rankings is called the ‘pure awesomeness factor,' which focuses on how good the skiing experience is.

Here’s how RealtyTrac lists the median home prices for the Idaho towns on its list:

  • Ketchum -  $419,000
  • Sandpoint - $210,000
  • Donnelly - $274,900

Find Adam Cotterell on Twitter @cotterelladam

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