If we sell now, I would not be surprised to find the same house cost me twice as much 20 years from now, adjusted for inflation. While we are FI, that would still hurt to buy back into. We could do it, barring a terrible sequence of returns over the next decade but it could eat up most of our "extra." But who knows, maybe the stock market will go nuts and we'd have been better having the money in the market.
Granted, I don't know have much of your financial picture including mortgage/$ you have in this house, but is what you're doing here all that different from stock picking? You have, at best, a guess what the local RE market will be like in 2 decades. Wouldn't you rather put your money in an index fund and settle for "average" returns?
If the house is double its value in 20 years, wouldn't you hope that corresponding amount of money you could put in the market today from selling it would be worth 4x what it is today?
Yeah, I'm neglecting the headache of financing without a conventional job, I'll admit that. However...
It's not our ideal spot right now, and maybe we'll never want to live there
My guess is that if you don't want to live there now, that influx of people moving to the region in droves probably isn't going to change your mind. That's my own anecdotal data of watching my own town suffer growing pains that has myself looking for an escape hatch.
Also, just my personal opinion again, but I'd prefer a fresh start on a future house than one from a deceased family member (assuming I wasn't raised in that house).
Since it hasn't been said yet, I'll offer the counterpoint that you might want to wait a few months after the passing of a parent before making a big decision. Give yourself time if you can't decide. It doesn't sound like you have fear of foreclosure bearing down on you.
You sound like you have a very similar personality to me (finding the ideal decision/evaluating countless scenarios of the future) so forgive me if I take a big jump to the conclusion that your gut seems to know that you should sell and it's waiting for your head to catch up. That's just a guess from a stranger on the web who knows very little about your own situation but I know from my own experience that it's often easier for others to see the path you're ultimately going to choose/should choose because they're not in the fog of all the little details only you yourself are privy to.