We're moving from Texas to Minnesota and I've never owned a snow shovel. Are we crazy?
You're not crazy, and you're not the first. Some of the happiest transplants I've worked with came from places where summer is the season you survive — they just flipped which months they spend indoors.
The house will do more adapting than you will. Homes here come winter-ready by default: basements (a Southern rarity, standard equipment here), furnaces built for the real thing, and construction that takes the frost line seriously. Your job is shorter than your fear list — a real coat, decent boots, and the decision not to hibernate. The first winter is an adjustment. By the second, most people are startled by how ordinary life stays: school happens, work happens, the grocery run happens, all of it on plowed roads in a heated car from an attached garage.
DM me RELOCATE for my relocation guide — and yes, there's a winter chapter written for exactly you.
I wrote this answer, and I stand behind it. I'm Chris Deutsch, a Minneapolis Realtor (MN #20382264). Twenty-five years of walking these neighborhoods, checking basements, and sitting across kitchen tables from people making exactly this call. I re-check every answer and date it — this one was last verified .
If your situation is more specific than the market, that's the one worth talking through. Email me at chris@lakesarearealty.com.