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Thinking About Moving
By JLP | March 13, 2006
With my wife’s job, there’s a pretty good chance we might have to move. This past weekend we had to attend a wedding in the Houston area and on our way back home yesterday, we took a detour to look at houses. Of course the neighborhoods we are interested in have houses that start at around $250,000 to $300,000. It is weird to think that we could buy nearly 3.5 of our current house for the price of one of the newer houses.
They were nice houses, no doubt. However, I don’t want us to get into something that will make us feel strapped. For a $300,000 house, we are looking at a mortgage note of at least $1,700 per month. That’s just part of it. The taxes in the areas we looked at would run somewhere around $11,000 per year, which is nearly $1,000 per month. Insurance would probably be another $2,000 per year or $170 per month. I’m sure there would be membership fees and stuff like that for the neighborhood community center. All the sudden we are looking at a $3,000 + house note per MONTH! That’s crazy! Right now we are paying a little over $1,000 per month.
Hopefully we won’t have to move for a while. Of course I’ll keep you all posted if and when the changes come.
Topics: Housing Market, Miscellaneous | 13 Comments »
March 13th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Good Lord! That kind of stuff makes me cringe and i’m still two years away from home ownership.
March 13th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Wow, it seems like everyone is moving… Man, if I had a $1,000/mo mortgage I’d stay put, but I’ve got West Coast goggles.
March 13th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
$250k-$300k, that’s all? WOW! Around here, you’d be lucky to get a condo for that price. $1,000/month (PITI) in my neck of the woods is a pipe dream. I’d stay put too!
March 13th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I’ll start a new job in the fall (at a new university). As a result, we’ll have to move, and we’ll end up paying about $100,000 more for the new house for one less bedroom than we currently have. Not a big deal, since we’ll be close to family, so we won’t need a guest bedroom.
When I was in my 20′s, if you told me I’d be paying over $400,000 for a house, I’d have said you were crazy. NBow I’d just assume you live in the Northeast.
March 13th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
Nickel’s mooving too!!! These things always come in threes — who’s next?
March 13th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
In our neighborhood houses start at around $900k and go to about $1.3mm. Someday we’ll cash out and go back to the real world…we could be neighbors!
March 13th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
In the SF Bay area, individual rooms rent for $500+ per month.
March 13th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
What kind of taxes?
11,000.00 Annual!
Here in Seattle a home that price, taxes would be around 2,500.00-3,200.00 per year.
Great to see you are looking at all the $ angles, but it may be the most amazing place to live, bringing growth, happiness, success and that’s all that matters.
March 14th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Houses are cheap in houston…it’s urban crawl at its finest! Property tax in Texas is a pain in the ass though, but I would still prefer it over an income tax.
March 14th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Houston house prices don’t sound bad at all! The taxes on the other hand sound outrageous.
March 14th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Goodness, compared to Seattle thats pretty darn cheap for a house! Is it in city? The taxes are messed up though.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
That sounds almost like what I am paying here in NY, but add another $100,000 to the initial price. Taxes are killing me here…about $10,000. I think that my homeowners is only about $1000 though, so I have that going for me…which is good.
I thought that Texas was supposed to be cheap? I have 3 sets of friends that moved to the Austin area and are always bragging how nice of a house they got for almost half the price. Maybe it is just in the Austin area that they got a good deal…who knows.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Thanks for all the comments. I posted a follow up post to this one.