🌲 Thinking about relocating to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho? This video is your ultimate guide! 🎯 Whether you’re moving for a job, lifestyle, or a breath of fresh mountain air, I’ve got answers to all your burning questions. 💬
I am Michelle Rene, a real estate broker, Coeur d’Alene REALTOR and in this comprehensive video, I walk you through everything you need to know about the Coeur d’Alene area — from why people are moving here 🏡 to how far it is from the nearest airport ✈️. I’ve even created The Everything Guide to Coeur d’Alene 📘— your go-to relocation resource.
✅ What’s inside the guide?
Population stats & neighborhood overviews 🧭
Hyper-local home search links by area 🏘️
Public, charter, and private school directories 🎓 (elementary through college!)
Dining & entertainment hotspots 🍽️🎭
Boat launch locations 🚤
Hospitals, health resources, libraries, banks & credit unions 🏥🏦
Government agencies, local services, and so much more! 🗂️
📲 Get your copy! The guide is available as a free digital PDF 💻 and also as a hard copy 📬— just reach out to me directly and I’ll send it your way.
✨ If you’re planning a move or just curious about life in North Idaho, this video is a must-watch. Tap into local insights and make your transition to Coeur d’Alene smooth and informed!
Transcript
[Michelle Rene]
Are you thinking about moving to Coeur d’Alene? You have to listen to this first before you do anything. I promise you will be thankful because I have so many resources for you, you’re not even going to believe it.
I’ve put together, I’m Michelle Renee by the way, I’m with Windermere Coeur d’Alene Realty and destinationliving.co is the website, and I have put together so many resources. I myself moved here several years ago, almost two decades now. I’ve lived in the area.
This is Northern Idaho, so we’re about 30 minutes away from Spokane and the airport. Spokane is Washington, but we are Northern Idaho, so about 90 miles or so from the Canadian border. It’s just a lovely place, but if you are not familiar, I just have so many resources for you.
I can’t wait to show you. I made that move myself, so a lot of these things that I’m providing are things I would have loved to have all in one spot. So now that I’m a realtor in the area, I sell houses in all of Northern Idaho, but I really focus on the Coeur d’Alene market.
Right next to Coeur d’Alene, there are a few other cities you might be familiar with, you may not, but I’ll just list off a few of them. Post Falls is right next door. Hayden and Hayden Lake, which by the way are two different cities, that’s just to the north of us a little bit.
And Dalton Gardens is in there. Brathdrum, Athol, Harrison, Whirley. So this is kind of the Kootenai County area of this region.
So Coeur d’Alene is like the hub. That’s maybe what more people have heard about because it’s a tourist destination. I happen to be right across the street from the Coeur d’Alene Resort.
That’s where my office is. I’m in the chamber building downstairs. But there’s just, there’s so many amazing resources.
And so whether you’re looking at just information about the region and you know making the decision should we move here or not, or if you’ve already made that decision and you’re ready to go hard and heavy and look at houses or you know decide on which city or which area is right for you, which subdivision maybe. So I can help address a lot of these questions and I will tell you all of this is available. So I’ll provide links to my website and to the guide that I’m going to tell you about.
But I’m going to share my screen right now and just kind of walk you through a number of things that I think you will find super helpful. Okay share, screen, boom. Okay so I’ve pulled these up already.
And what we have here is like I said the Everything Guide to Coeur d’Alene. Okay I have this pulled up and this is actually a print version. So if you’re in the area you can stop by and pick one of these magazines up.
It is a magazine. Look there’s, well it says 27 but these are two pages. It’s like 52 pages.
Okay so if you want to stop in you can get a hard copy. If you’re not in the area and you want to, you want me to mail you one of these, I would be happy to do that. So you should get in touch with me.
Destinationliving.co. Everything is right there, all my address, contact info and everything. If you just want to use this digital version, which is actually, even if you have the hard copy you still want the digital because I’m going to show you why. You’ve got so many clickable links.
So maybe you’re thinking about education. Let’s go to the table of contents. You want the directory.
You’ve got a map here and you can bump over and take a look at different areas of real estate and let’s see maybe you want home builders and so you bump over to this page which happens to be page 35. So again this is sort of laid out like a magazine right so left and right but you can click on not every single one has a clickable link but if you can see this is just the pdf version. So you can click on one of these builders, right click, open in a new link.
I mean yeah and then you can see it opens up to that particular builder. So again not all of these are clickable but a fair amount of them are and besides the builders, let’s see what else do I want to show you. I’ve got lots of things to do in the area.
So this particular one you know I wanted to bump over to the golf page. So again right click, open in a new tab and you don’t have to do that but just so you don’t have to you know go back and forth back and forth and look there’s Avondale. So these are our area golf courses.
The ones in red are private clubs so you would obviously need a membership or someone to invite you and but the ones in green are public so you can you know open that website and a lot of these you can book your tee times online actually. So yeah book now see this is so fun. So if you are a golfer you must a hundred percent you must go golf the Coeur d’Alene resort at least once.
It’s very fun and that floating green is kind of you know we’re famous for that so that’s fun. But I’m going to walk through a handful of these pages. The other way to get to some of this information I’m going to close these links that I had just opened.
I already had opened my website so destinationliving.co not dot com dot co and this is where you can grab this everything guide. So that here let me move this thing. Okay resources so if you go this is kind of the online version of the everything guide.
It’s not laid out you know like the magazine is but you have a lot of the same info. So about the area if you click on the left you know there’s a whole section about you know just the region and then there’s the local real estate market. One of the things that this digital version does not have I mean the that this section of the website does not have that the like magazine style does is when you go to the map even though it’s sideways you kind of have to look sideways.
But if you’re familiar with the area there’s you know some of these are really popular neighborhoods. So if you look at the key here like Sanders Beach is number one you can click on Sanders on number one which is Sanders Beach and if you click open in a new tab it’ll take you to a property search just for that neighborhood. Isn’t that cool?
Ah I love that. We spend a lot of time obviously on putting this together. I’m sorry that you have to look at it sideways.
Maybe you know we’ll fix that somehow. This is again the magazine version so this has to kind of lay out this way. But in the other so I will make these clickable at some point and and to be able to do that same property search but at the moment it’s not.
But another section here that’s really key is things to do. So you have like all the restaurants and boat launches. What else?
You know again some of these are clickable. Popular points of interest and things to do. So if you you know you’re interested maybe in the CDA holiday light show and then look there it is.
Okay so that’s how this works. That’s the things to do section. Again a lot of these are clickable.
The directory is another section that’s amazing. Tons of links and just so many resources. Again the builders.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Banks. You know maybe you need to reach out to someone to get you know pre-approved for a home or whatever.
Here’s some local credit unions. So much information. And then we have a separate section on education.
If you’re interested in you know the Coeur d’Alene area schools. Again this is including like Post Falls and you know some of the surrounding areas. Oh charter schools.
Look at all the charters. Yeah so just a ton of information here that’s all kind of in one spot. And this is the website version.
And then let me go back to kind of the magazine version right. So this is just the welcome, hello, why do people move here. Here’s your table of contents.
But these you can click on. You see when it turns into the hand right. You can bump over to those pages.
But I’m just going to keep scrolling here to show you. You know here’s your climate and local statistics. This is an image where it shows you the Spokane airport.
This is actually a really important element of I think why Coeur d’Alene is so appealing. I’ve been to many you know destination cities and one of the things that is a challenge is if you’re really far from an international airport it’s not fun to you know do all this travel. Spend a day or so long to get to the location.
And then once you get off the airplane you have to drive another maybe whatever three hours or something right. Not us. I mean where I’m sitting right now this minute in downtown Coeur d’Alene we’re probably about 40 minutes from the airport.
Definitely under an hour. Maybe 45 minutes from the airport. That’s incredible because Spokane you know that’s a whole different animal.
People have opinions about the Spokane area which is Washington. We over here in Coeur d’Alene on the Idaho side of the state line I feel like we’re kind of in a little bubble. And so you know we’re definitely a resort town but at the same time we’re not just a resort town.
We’re not just tourism. There’s people that live here year-round. Myself included.
Yes we have a lot of vacation homes. Yes we have a lot of second home people. Yes we have a lot of vacation rental properties right.
So for investment you know if you’re interested in that obviously I can help you with that. But I think it’s really important that to point out that we are a year-round destination location. So people come here for Christmas events.
They come here for fall festival, wine events, Oktoberfest. You know it’s not just summer months only right. So that’s really key.
But this aspect of being this close to the airport that’s part I think of what makes us so appealing when you are comparing to you know other maybe destination cities to live in or near. And also maybe somewhere to retire. Yeah just so important.
I mean you can my family I’m from Southern California. My family is still down there and I can jump on a plane and get a direct flight to either San Diego or LAX. I’m there in like not even three hours.
And it’s just boom boom. You know so easy. So I feel like that’s super important.
Okay and then here’s just information you know about the area. All the appeal of our lakes and rivers and things to do. Camping.
We do have some you know culture. This is actually one of my friends. She owns this gallery and it’s right down the street from me here in downtown Coeur d’Alene.
So you know we’ve got some culture. We have lots of festivals like I said. We’ve got lots of outdoor activities.
You know horseback riding and shooting and you know kayaking. All sorts of water sports right. Fishing is off the hook.
Well pun intended I guess. And then so in the guide here is where I start to talk about the real estate market right. So it’s very appealing.
We have everything from single family homes, condos, townhomes. We don’t have a lot of like small multifamily. I mean there’s some like you know duplexes or triplexes or whatever.
You know we’ve got apartment buildings here in town. They have been building you know quite a bit. We still have a lot of construction going on.
In fact speaking of that down again sorry you have to look sideways. But so right here is like the downtown area of Coeur d’Alene. See where it says Sherman Avenue.
And oh actually I take that back one Sanders Beach. So that’s Sanders Beach. This right on the other side of Tubbs Hill.
This is famous for our area Tubbs Hill. So this whole area right in here is all like the downtown region. And Sherman Avenue is kind of like our you know Main Street USA right.
So here’s the points of interest. So that might be helpful to you. The CDA which stands for of course Coeur d’Alene.
City Park and Beach and the Resort and the Visitor Center. That’s where I’m sitting right now like I mentioned. So anyway this is you know just something helpful for you to get familiar with the area.
One thing I’ll point out when you’re looking at a map of Coeur d’Alene. Again sorry this is north right. Going north.
This is south. When you’re looking at the west side of the lake here there’s Highway 95. See that.
It’s easy to get to a lot of these communities on this side of the lake. And by easy I mean maybe you know this might be like 15 minutes 20 minutes away. This is maybe you know like 30 if that.
Maybe 25. Anyway this is a pretty straight shot. Okay when you’re looking at real estate on the other side of the lake it’s not good or bad.
It’s just different. So you have to get on the freeway and go down the 97 here. And then you know you this is like a page.
So it’s not exactly perfect. But the point is it’s a little windy. It takes a little longer.
So you know don’t just look like okay how far down the lake is this house. Let’s say you have something in here. It’s you know it’s just a consideration right.
So you might be this might be like 45 minutes to an hour. Whereas you know like I say this is maybe more like 25 minutes or so. Anyway just something to be aware of.
And then here’s just again I’m kind of you know really focused on the Coeur d’Alene area specifically. So these are little micro neighborhoods within the Coeur d’Alene area. And they’re sort of separated by you know is it in downtown Coeur d’Alene.
There’s a whole section called Riverstone and Atlas Waterfront which is right next to each other. And so is Mill River. So again when you’re looking at these neighborhoods if you go back to the map and you’re interested let’s say in Cougar Gulch you’re gonna you know and you want to see like what properties are over in Cougar Gulch and like the price ranges and things.
So in that particular region this is not like super precise right. Cougar Gulch is like kind of an area. But it’ll give you an idea.
There’s 29 listings here and you know an idea of price range right. So that’s how that works. Here’s some information about the market as a whole from 2024 stats.
This being 2025. So you know we have the full year stats in there. And then it jumps over to things to do.
So again with this local dining guide you can here let’s look at some of the waterfront. So Waterfront Waterview Dining. So Tony’s by the famous lake.
Famous.
[Michelle Rene]
Right click. Right click Beverly’s. Open in a new tab.
Right click dock side. Open in a new tab. Let’s see what else.
Cedars floating. Oh Les Peep. Love.
That’s fantastic. So let’s go look at some of those.
[Michelle Rene]
So you’ve got if this opened up for Tony’s this really is kind of locally famous. Beverly’s is here in the resort. So that’s their fine dining in the resort.
Dockside also in the resort actually. Les Peep is over at Riverstone. That’s some of the best breakfast in the area in my humble opinion.
So anyway you can see you just how easy is this. You know if you want Asian. It’s getting a little tough for me to keep everything on one page.
You know I bet next time because we are growing right. It’ll yeah we’ll see if I can keep it all on one page. And then here’s your boat launches.
These are not clickable unfortunately but you can at least get an idea a sense of you know like here’s the downtown area and like where your different launches are. Okay and then you’ve got things to do. Art on the green.
Oh love. That that’s in the summer months. So let’s see.
There you go. Boom. So I mean how cool is this right.
Just everything’s in one spot. Oh if you’re new to the area you must and especially if you have kids you must know about the Kroc Center. Amazing.
Such such a a gem in our community. Love that place. Like we spent a lot of time there when my kids were growing up.
Okay what else. Just I mean you should really click around and Higgins Point famous. The eagles come here every year in the winter months and you’ve got you know photographers wildlife photographers.
They have their lenses that are like as long as your arm and they just camp out on the shoreline. It’s amazing. Yeah so cool.
Okay and then we have you know spas and shopping and ranches. I mean you can read all this. If you’re into shooting lots of fun things to do around here when it comes to the shooting clubs.
There’s some resources for fishing. If you want to do a fun afternoon you should contact the guys over at Fins and Feathers. They will take you out for an amazing experience out on the water.
Yeah super cool. Rafting, RV campgrounds, hiking. God so much amazing hiking in the area.
Tubbs Hill is a gem. I mentioned that before. It’s right here downtown.
You can just park wherever and just go hike that for the afternoon. And then some of these you know are a little further out but they’re still local for the most part. Canfield Mountain, Mineral Ridge amazing.
So pretty. The Centennial Trail is a gem. Just such a gem.
Let’s see right click open. Let me show you. Welcome to the Centennial Trail.
Here’s the trail map and then this is interactive I believe. Yeah so you can you know get a sense of how far the Centennial Trail goes. And it goes right through downtown here and it ends over at Higgins Point which is awesome.
It’s just so beautiful over there.
[Michelle Rene]
Oh this background image is right of the trail and it’s that’s the Veterans Bridge right there.
[Michelle Rene]
Yeah really cool. Okay and then winter sports. I mean like I said we’re year-round right.
So now we don’t have any ski hills like right here in downtown Coeur d’Alene or even you know anywhere near this. But they are within driving distance. Easy driving distance.
So I want to say Schweitzer might be like 45 or 50 minutes away. Like around an hour. All of these are probably within somewhere between 45 and an hour.
And then Farragut is not just for winter time. Farragut I’m sure that’s listed in my guide here somewhere else as well. But that is another gem up north of us.
Farragut State Park. Just so beautiful over there. Snowmobiling trails and you can you know right click and like link up with some of these snowmobiling clubs.
[Michelle Rene]
CDA Snowmobile Club.
[Michelle Rene]
Yeah super cool trail. I already showed you the golf right. There’s a lot of great golf around here.
I would say the golf season is you know it starts to warm up here in April. So you can you can start golfing if you get some good weather in April through October. But I would say probably more the you know height of the golf season is more like May through September.
So but yeah there’s really amazing golf around here. I showed you the builders right. So you can just you know hover.
And these are all let me point this out actually really quick is NIBCA stands for North Idaho Building Contractors Association. I’ve been very involved with them since I started real estate several years ago. And I just I love what they do as an organization.
They’re legit and if you’re a builder you really should belong to the NIBCA. And they put on actually several things throughout the year. But one of the key things is the Parade of Homes.
That’s in the fall. And the parade is amazing. The builders you know they’ll they’ll put a they’ll enter a home that they’re going to build.
And it’ll be you know an amazing home. And attendees can go. It’s two weekends in the fall like I said usually I think it’s September.
And you can go tour all these different homes that the builders have built. And they’re sort of competing you know for different categories right. Like best kitchen or whatever best landscaping.
But it’s really cool to be able to see so many different homes and so many different builders all at once on two weekends. So highly recommend that. But yeah as you can see there’s a lot of members to the NIBCA.
And I just always support that organization. Okay and then you know like I said before you saw in the website version some of these same things. So you know it’s duplicate right.
But this is all in one spot where on the website you’re sort of clicking around to the different sections. Okay so again a lot of these are clickable if you need if you’re wanting to contact you know the city of Coeur d’Alene and here’s all the different departments. Or the city of Hayden or Hayden Lake.
Like I mentioned those are two different cities. And you have fire, government, libraries, licensing, newspapers, police department, post offices. You know if you’ve got to you know contact your utilities to get them turned on or turned off or whatever.
There’s so many resources all in one spot. Okay we’ve got a lot of questions about medical on a regular. So again one of the key reasons I think our area is thriving is we have access right here in town.
I mean five minutes from where I’m sitting maybe 10 minutes. You know to hospitals lots of different health resources. You know vision just all the things.
VA services are listed there. So yeah there’s a lot to offer to the area. And then here in the magazine version we have the schools.
So you can you know maybe you found a house and you’re like wanting more information about you know one of these. Let’s say Hayden Meadows right click open. Let’s see that one went there.
And there it is. And so you can you know explore the different sections within that particular school and come back and maybe you know you’re considering a charter school right. Here’s private schools.
Maybe you don’t want to do public and you don’t want to do charter but you want to do private. So here you go boom boom boom. There you go.
Okay all in one spot. You’re welcome. Obviously I put a lot of effort into this and I just remember being I just had so many questions when we decided to move here from California because I wasn’t we weren’t moving here because we had family or knew even one soul.
I mean we just love the area. We learned a lot about you know things that were appealing to us. It was a slower pace of life compared to where we came from in California.
And it was just important you know to be able to answer a lot of these questions. But I had to really hunt and peck and search around. So as an agent now I feel like I’m doing the world a service by providing all of this.
This is my team. So this is I’m Michelle Renee as you can gather that by now. This is Emily Iverson.
She’s amazing. If you’re working with me you’ll probably interact with Emily at some point. And then Devin is also amazing.
He helps out. And actually we’ve been doing events lately and Devin’s been helping with that as well. So yeah I have you know so many resources.
And then the brokerage itself. Windermere has three locations actually two now. But Coeur d’Alene’s like the hub and then Hayden as well.
But Windermere has their own full staff. And so between Emily, Devin, myself and all the back office stuff that happens through the Windermere brokerage we’ve got you covered.
Here is the back of the magazine, this QR code will get you to the website to be able to download this digital guide. If you are looking at the video, and you want to pause this, it will get you to where you want to go.
I would like to invite you to contact me if you’re thinking about moving to the area, I know I can help you. I know so many people who are getting familiar with the area and there is just so much to know and to learn. I have shared many things with you here, but especially when you are ready for a search. I have lots of amazing resources for that. If you need a lender, I have some amazing people that I lean on. If you are watching this on my YouTube channel there are many resources on here as well. Including several interviews with lenders that I have done recently.
I hope that helps, I hope you found some value in this and I would absolutely love to help if you are looking at relocating to the area. Or even if you’re a local, and you need help buying or selling. Whatever, here I am! Ready for you.
destinationliving.co is the web address and let me know if you have any questions. Take care, bye.
