Mortgage info
Nov 29th 2015, 3:40 am
#16
Austin. TX.
Joined: Sep 2013
Posts: 5,930
Re: Mortgage info
We rented for 9 months before buying as well. TBH I thought we did really well just managing to find a decent rental to move straight into when we moved, never mind trying to buy straight away. I must have looked at every house for sale in our area in our price range for 6 months before we were ready to buy. The others are right about it being very different here to the UK or in my case, France.
I think it was user-exe who mentioned property tax - it is fairly pricey here but that makes no difference whether you buy or rent since it will be included in the cost of the rent anyway - the landlord is not going to pay it out of his own pocket.... People moan about it but it is no more than we were paying in France for property tax and our house there was smaller.
It's the water and electricity bills here that get to me......we've now been in the USA for 2 years and I'm just getting the hang of using a/c and trying to minimise the cost of that. (BTW Mr P, you were right about the Nest thermostat and pre-heating, I've now disabled all the auto-stuff).
Kids activities cost loads here, although petrol is cheaper you will probably be driving more in a bigger car and probably 2 of them at that, car insurance and other insurances are expensive here and you will be paying towards the cost of your medical care in some way. I would hold off buying a house until you've got a good handle on your finances/expenditure because it would be a shame not to be able to afford to get out of Houston!!! (That's a bit of Austin/Houston rivalry....)
I think it was user-exe who mentioned property tax - it is fairly pricey here but that makes no difference whether you buy or rent since it will be included in the cost of the rent anyway - the landlord is not going to pay it out of his own pocket.... People moan about it but it is no more than we were paying in France for property tax and our house there was smaller.
It's the water and electricity bills here that get to me......we've now been in the USA for 2 years and I'm just getting the hang of using a/c and trying to minimise the cost of that. (BTW Mr P, you were right about the Nest thermostat and pre-heating, I've now disabled all the auto-stuff).
Kids activities cost loads here, although petrol is cheaper you will probably be driving more in a bigger car and probably 2 of them at that, car insurance and other insurances are expensive here and you will be paying towards the cost of your medical care in some way. I would hold off buying a house until you've got a good handle on your finances/expenditure because it would be a shame not to be able to afford to get out of Houston!!! (That's a bit of Austin/Houston rivalry....)
Nov 29th 2015, 1:46 pm
#17
BE Enthusiast
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 572
Re: Mortgage info
I'm for renting to start off. When my company used to transfer me, we were given a week to go and find somewhere to live. We used it to find somewhere to rent. Once we had moved, then, depending how long I was going (supposed) to be at the new location, we would go and look for a place to buy.
Nov 29th 2015, 2:28 pm
#18
Joined: Dec 2001
Location: Dixie, ex UK
Posts: 52,448
Re: Mortgage info
For anyone else interested, this is the post that PF is referring to:
I suspect (am fairly certain) that you will have the same issues with a "Nest" as we did with our timer thermostat i.e.that the thermostat "does its own thing" based on what it thinks we want, meaning that if I set the thermostat to turn the heat on at 5.30am and allow the temperature to fall by 10°F overnight, the thermostat desides that is going to take 2 hours to reach the set temperature and comes on at 3.30 in the morning.
There are two problems with trying to beat the thermostat at its own game by setting the thermostat to come on at 7.30am - firstly on nights where the temperature only falls a couple of degrees, the heat doesn't come on two hours early, and secondly when we only want the heat to come on for 45-60 minutes while we get ready to go to school & work, and assuming it does come on two hours early, we would have to set the thermostat to go "off" one hour before it comes "on" - which is obviously nonsense.
It was after I found out how I really could force the thermostat to turn on exactly when I had programed it to come on that our heating bills suddenly dropped by 30%, which was primarily the result of cutting the morning heating cycle from three hours to one hour or less, and also by lopping a couple of hours off the evening heating cycle. .....
There are two problems with trying to beat the thermostat at its own game by setting the thermostat to come on at 7.30am - firstly on nights where the temperature only falls a couple of degrees, the heat doesn't come on two hours early, and secondly when we only want the heat to come on for 45-60 minutes while we get ready to go to school & work, and assuming it does come on two hours early, we would have to set the thermostat to go "off" one hour before it comes "on" - which is obviously nonsense.
It was after I found out how I really could force the thermostat to turn on exactly when I had programed it to come on that our heating bills suddenly dropped by 30%, which was primarily the result of cutting the morning heating cycle from three hours to one hour or less, and also by lopping a couple of hours off the evening heating cycle. .....
Last edited by Pulaski; Nov 29th 2015 at 2:32 pm.
