Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
What do you pay in TOTAL for your house?
- Thread starter mattsk42
- Start date
This argues for a homogeneity in housing prices that largely doesn't exist.
Within a 10 mile drive of my workplace there are 10 different school districts - each with it's own tax rates/policies, and wildly varying desirability (2 of the districts are top 20 in the state, some are bottom 1/4 in the state)
Within a 10 mile drive of my workplace there are 3 cities, 3 villages, and 12 townships - all of which have differing tax structures, differing services, differing demographics (of both people and homes), and massive differences in desirability.
I could buy a newer version of the identical house I currently live in, on a lot 10x the size, 3 miles down the road from where I currently live... for about half what my house is appraised at.
For me it's just over a grand for everything escrowed together. That gets me a 1600 sq. ft 4 bed, 2 bath with 2 stall attached garage, and I think something like a 8000 sq. ft lot. No HOA fees, refuse to buy a home if it involves one, personally. I should also note that we have no state income tax, so property taxes are higher because of that. My portion of property taxes is something like 3 grand a year, maybe a little less, I don't quite remember.
I bought a 1960s brick ranch in west Denver for $190k in 2008. 2400 sq ft on a 10k sq ft lot. It was a fixer upper (never again) and I probably sunk $40k and 6 years into it but a significant quantity of the house is completely new. No cosmetic upgrades here. Refinanced at 3% and now the mortgage is a little over $1k.
How does "average" argue for homogeneity? Obviously, if prices were homogeneous, then there would be no need to use the word "average."
If home prices aren't homogeneous and the distribution isn't of a certain type - average provides no information. The use of average implies that average provides a reasonably representative location estimator.
Average is only useful if it is a useful characterization of "the typical value" of the data.
In terms of house prices on houses available in most geographic locations the average is so highly non-representative as to be useless:
1. Severe outliers are present
2. The distribution is often multi-modal
3. The distribution has high variance.
I don't think my words imply your interpretation, but whatever. Let's agree to disagree.
Edit: I appreciate what you say, but our disagreement isn't really germane to the question that we were both trying to answer. I was really just trying to get away from the tendency to answer with anecdotes.
Last edited:
bigfatbass
Inactive
- Jun 30, 2003
- 2,420
- 404
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Karl Hoyt Basses
Not really, but it depends how you look at it. If you can kick a little extra on the principle every month, as mentioned above, you cut interest and timeline in a major way, which can really help towards making an investment worth it. Your income can most certainly have an impact if you buy smart, do your fixing-up without tapping equity, and buy within your REAL budget. That means you have to have money left over every month to handle things like a dead water heater etc., out of pocket. Excellent comment about buying the smallest place you can stand in the nicest 'hood you can afford.
Syracuse is cheap, I explain it at length in the thread about where to live. Sorry my posts are long, I still type like a grad student
. We got into our house near the Syracuse University campus for about $96k after fees/closing etc. The first thing we did was retap on it and tear down the existing monstrosity of a garage that ate the whole yard (lawn space is a big seller on our street). Demo and the new smaller garage by the road ran us another $27k. The house was re-appraised early last year for around $125, so we are pretty much already in the black for value vs cost. We've been in the house a little over 10 years, and plan on possibly moving sometime in the next few years, lets say 3-5 years out. I enjoy the light yard work, it's not that big, and a snowblower small enough to lift solo handles the whole driveway in 20 minutes. By the time we split we will have lived as a wash, save for property taxes/utilities, things that = what we would have paid for a crappy apartment.I would never consider going back to renting until retirement years. Sure a house can cost you a lot of money, but hardly just a money pit unless you treat it like one.
With all due respect, this does not apply to all of America, but could apply to your particular city. if you are willing to move to an entirely different city, there are still many opportunities. i was living in a city about 20 years ago with a lousy paying job and made the decision to move to a completely different city that happened to booming at the time (around 1995).
Paying interest is sickening, but it is a reminder that I was too lazy to save $300K before buying a house.
Last edited:
My wife and I just bought our 1st house (4br/finished bsmnt/back yard) in a suburb just outside of boston. While it's more costly than the condo we rented for 6 yrs, there's really something to be said for coming home from work to MY home. Great feeling!!!
When I'm good, I'm good... When I'm bad, I'm better....
When I'm good, I'm good... When I'm bad, I'm better....
We just bought a house in San Jose, CA, one of the most expensive places to buy right now. I won't even go into what we pay. The property taxes alone make me want to vomit. But it's a long term deal. We aren't going anywhere for at least 25 years.
Needless to say my gig money does not pay the mortgage!
Needless to say my gig money does not pay the mortgage!
6jase5
Mammogram is down but I'm working manually
I fly up there every week or so (lovely airport) to visit with a client. Yes, SJ prices make San Diego look like a bargain. Darn tech companies.
This is absurd logic. All of the expenses you listed are factored into rental pricing, first of all. You don't "avoid" those costs by signing a lease, they are just managed differently. Secondly, not everybody buys a house that requires constant, massive upgrades/repairs. Proper due diligence will tell you if you are making a sound investment.
Also: if you are buying houses to quickly flip, where are you supposed to live while all that work is going on? In a rental? If your job is flipping houses, then you must be WAY more savvy than the average buyer, more skilled, more comfortable with risk, more experienced on all levels of real estate, frankly.
I lost my house in a divorce a few years ago but when we bought it, it was 2005 and we paid $200,000 for a 1,100 sq. ft. approx 3 bed/1 bath ranch. We put down about $17,000 and had a 30 yr. fixed at about 6%. Our mortgage was about $1400 a month with insurance and taxes included.
In 2014 my ex wife is now trying to sell the house for $160,000. I won't see a dime, one because when we split up we were under water and couldn't sell it so she just worked to remove me from the loan and 2) based on what I knew she owed on it 4 years ago when we split up, I figure that at best she's only breaking even.
I hope to own again some day as I hate renting with an unbridled passion. Not just the money that gets thrown away but the lack of freedom and for me as someone with a disability, apartments as less accessible than a house. At least with a home I can make my environment what I need it to be in order to function. I can't do that in an apartment. Now that I'm on SSDI I worry that I'll never own again, but my girlfriend's income is slowly going up so hopefully by the end of the decade maybe we'll have enough saved and make enough that we can get a small house. I just wish that home prices were a tad cheaper around here.
In 2014 my ex wife is now trying to sell the house for $160,000. I won't see a dime, one because when we split up we were under water and couldn't sell it so she just worked to remove me from the loan and 2) based on what I knew she owed on it 4 years ago when we split up, I figure that at best she's only breaking even.
I hope to own again some day as I hate renting with an unbridled passion. Not just the money that gets thrown away but the lack of freedom and for me as someone with a disability, apartments as less accessible than a house. At least with a home I can make my environment what I need it to be in order to function. I can't do that in an apartment. Now that I'm on SSDI I worry that I'll never own again, but my girlfriend's income is slowly going up so hopefully by the end of the decade maybe we'll have enough saved and make enough that we can get a small house. I just wish that home prices were a tad cheaper around here.
Best bet is to get in touch with a good realtor and then get a pre-approval through a mortgage company. Whatever you buy... be sure to have a few thousand stashed. 2 months after I bought my first house, there was freezing temps and the waterline at the sidewalk froze up and burst costing me an unexpected 2k.
We live in Tigard, OR. In 2005 we put a $62,000 down payment on a house that listed for $280,000. (It was the height of the housing boom and we sold our old house for WAY more than it was worth).
Our mortgage is about $1,500 per month. Taxes are paid within the mortgage payment. Electric about $120. Gas about $50. Garbage about $60. Water about $65. No sewer as our house is on a septic tank. Costs about $300 to get that pumped out about every 5 years.
Hope that helps!
Our mortgage is about $1,500 per month. Taxes are paid within the mortgage payment. Electric about $120. Gas about $50. Garbage about $60. Water about $65. No sewer as our house is on a septic tank. Costs about $300 to get that pumped out about every 5 years.
Hope that helps!
One thing you have to know though, buying a house is not the expensive part. OWNING a house is. Anything that goes wrong, its all on you to fix it. And if you don't know how, or cannot fix it yourself, you're screwed.
