Housing Boom In The Bakken -- June 12, 2015

Earlier I posted Bakken economy milestones which included a bit on the housing boom in the Bakken. Here's a longer report, coming from the Twin Cities.

From The Star Tribune:

North Dakota built new housing at a faster clip than any other state from 2010 through last summer, as people flooded the state in search of work in the booming oil patch.
The U.S. Census Bureau's latest annual estimate shows North Dakota's housing growth rate far outpaced any other state's in the year leading up to last July 1, continuing a longer trend dating back to the last 10-year Census in 2010.

"We've seen families move into North Dakota from around the country, and the majority are coming because of the influx with the oil boom," said Kim Schneider, executive officer with the North Dakota Association of Builders.

The state's 3 percent growth in housing units from mid-2013 through mid-2014 was well ahead of Utah's 1.4 percent, which ranked second, according to the new report. From 2010 through mid-2014, North Dakota's housing units grew by 10.4 percent, far exceeding second-place Texas' 4.5 percent.

Among U.S. counties with at least 5,000 housing units, Williams County in the heart of the North Dakota oil patch had the fastest growth rate from mid-2013 through mid-2014, at 11.6 percent. Four other western counties also ranked in the top 12 nationally, including Stark, Morton, Ward and Burleigh counties.

Cass and Grand Forks counties in the east also were in the top 20, with growth rates above 3 percent, showing that not all of North Dakota's growth happened in the west.

The state overall has a healthy economy, and some families in the west also have moved east to escape the headaches associated with the oil boom, such as increased traffic and crime, according to Schneider.

"The need for housing around the oil boom area also gave a lot of families the opportunity to sell their homes or property at a price much higher than in a normal market," which created demand for housing in other parts of the state as the sellers moved, she said.

Between 2010 and 2014, Williams County was No. 1 in the nation with a 56.8 percent growth rate in housing units and Stark County was second with a 28 percent rate. Ward and Morton counties were in the Top 10, with growth rates above 14 percent, and Burleigh and Cass counties were in the Top 20, with rates above 10 percent.

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A Note for the Granddaughters

At this link, there is a science experiment that is perfect for middle school students, and maybe even for high school students. It's an experiment to test various household anti-microbials to see which works better / best.

Yesterday, we took our three granddaughters to the Perot Museum in Dallas. Our older granddaughter has been at the museum several times and has always wanted to do that experiment. Yesterday, she was thrilled. She got to to the experiment.

The lab in the museum is set up such that no instructor or museum employee actually has to be there to to help you. There is one museum employee -- a college biology major -- who manages traffic flow, helps students get started, and then answers any questions.

I was very impressed how effortless it was to carry out a fairly sophisticated experiment.

It is impossible to enumerate all the concepts that were necessary for this experiment to work and how, even after completing the experiment, there were questions about the experiment to be explored and answered.

The two biggest questions: the issue of fluorescence and microbes, and what role the "indicator solution" played. The "indicator solution" information can be found at this site.