I drove to a funeral up in Monona, Ia. a couple days ago and saw something really disturbing along the way. Strawberry Point is a nice little town with well-kept homes. Nice upright orderly well-kept NE Iowa town. Nice public library and schools. Going up I saw two hand-painted signs outside nice looking homes a few blocks away from each other. One for sale for $9,100. The other for sale for $8400. Yikes! Nice family homes. A third home with realtor's sign saying monthly payments $360. Coming back through town the other direction I really looked and saw the homes were nice but there was no retail in the business district and it didn't look like there were much of any businesses otherwise in town. Nearest town that had a working economy was more than a short commute away. There used to be a mental health hospital in Manchester but the State closed it. There is not a lot of a working economy for counties around up in that part of the State. If those houses sell for those prices that means that everyone else's nice homes in that town of Strawberry Point are worth only that. Jeeesus! Iowa needs jobs out in the country to save itself. It's a cautionary tale.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/30/170639279/economy-shrank-at-0-1-percent-annual-rate-in-fourth-quarter
