[NVDave]

That’s because Idaho has been a second-level player in the real estate boom. When I’ve driven through Twin, Boise/Nampa and clear out to Caldwell, I’m blown away by how much residential development was underway. In 2007, I could not believe how much housing you folks had under development in Idaho, and I also could not see how people could afford those homes given the median incomes in the area, especially places like Caldwell and Twin.

Now that the housing market is imploding, the unemployment in the building trades has to be hitting Idaho pretty hard.

In Wyoming, there wasn’t much of a building boom. The state remembers the boom of the last oil spike that ended about 1983 - which created ghost towns in the implosion. So counties and towns were much more circumspect in allowing building to get out of control, because they had seen energy booms before and remembered that they usually come to a sudden end - just as we’re seeing now.

We’ll see the unemployment in WY go up as oil/gas development companies pull back on drilling projects here. The small projects are already being shut in and one energy company (Rock Well, out of Canada) has filed for bankruptcy.

[Myrddin]

I haven't been west of Twin Falls thus far, so I missed seeing all that new construction. We've had some new construction in Pocatello, but most of it has been sold. There's not much inventory available. That's good, because there aren't lots of qualified buyers chasing it either. Much of the new construction was being consumed by "equity bandits" escaping from California and purchasing a much larger house for the same money. Pocatello certainly doesn't have a job market that would support locals purchasing houses in the upper price ranges.