More About the House
Thanks Faith Ann and Christine for your comments. Faith Ann: I'm not sure why they said it would be good as a retirement home; it would be the perfect house for us, a young family.
Christine: property taxes are 1.25% so assuming we could get it at $600,000 it would be $625/month. The same house where we live right now would be aroung $480,000-$520,000 and in the beach community where we lived two years ago it would be about $900,000. We make pretty good money; I don't know how the "average" family can afford to live here.
I showed it to Jay last night and he spent an hour looking at jobs online in the area. It's about 25 minutes away (worse with traffic) and we could only afford to have one person driving a long commute. There are several golf-related companies and courses in the area so he could get a better job there and be able to pick up Luke from school. We seriously looked at it last night, but it would be such a stretch. We'd be left with $250/week for food, gas, etc and I'd have to fill up the gas tank ($26) once every 6 days. I am so sad; if all of our other bills were paid off we could buy it now! Argh!
Realistically, we will probably look to move in 1 year. By then we'll have the tv, computer, car, my student loan, and most of the equity line paid off, leaving just the one credit card with the balance transfer at 1.9% on it. Also we really like Luke's preschool and he won't start Kindergarden until fall 2006. I know I shouldn't have looked, but Jay had been talking so much about wanting to live near the beach and I wanted to see if it would even be possible. Almost!
The good news is that this has been an eye opener for me and I am motivated to eat at home and not buy anything unnecessary so that we really can get out of debt and buy a house.
On a very happy note though, we get to visit the kittens tonight. If all goes well we'll be picking out two to take home in another week or two after they've been neutered. Luke still insists that we should get three, but he's not the one that will be scooping the litter boxes. I am really excited to be getting kittens. :)
posted by Jill in CA @ 9:38 AM
3 Comments:
It's too bad you won't be able to get this house, Jill, but a year really isn't that far away. It'll give you more time to prepare rather than rushing. I'm sure you'll find a fantastic house to suit your needs when you're ready to move!
I still can't get over the house prices there. To buy a home for what yours costs (transferred into Canadian dollars) where I live would give you quite a large home in a very nice area. It's amazing how things like this vary from area to area, isn't it?
You'll find another, equally fabulous, house in a year. There are *always* houses for sale. If you went ahead with it now, you'd both be so stressed over finances it would really decrease the fun/enjoyment of buying and moving.
Good luck with the bills...and I hear ya on the eating out. That's one of our major downfalls and since we bought our new place, I really put in extra effort for us to eat at home.
Wow, Jill, that's a nice house. It inspires me to 1) freshly paint this house and 2) declutter this house.
I know what you mean about house prices, and moving. We've lived here fifteen years now, and our house has a lot of equity. Our payment is VERY low compared to most houses in So California. (It's our second home and we put a lot down.) When we bought it our payment was HIGH compared to our income, but now it's low. Does that make sense? We've thought of moving to a different area in the same city, but I can't give up what we have. Sigh. Most of all I can't give up this reasonable payment.
You have a long time to save up money and buy your dream house. Don't worry, things will be better just around the corner. Sounds like you have a good plan.
(Susan in SoCal)
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