tht

Th utilities someone posted below below are way off for CT. The mix will really depend on what heating fuel you have between Electric, NG (Gas), LPG and Oil, we have a pretty average size 3 bed 2 bath and have gas heating and hot water and if you haveAC, electric is between $100-250 a month and gas between $60-250 a month, depending on size of house you are probably looking at an average $250-550 a month, our 12 month average s $296. Feb was highest around $350 and June/November lowest around $220.

We have 2 Japanese AWD cars, both were brought new mine is a 7 seater but unusable as such because of kids seats in the middle row, mine is 0% over 6 years at about $420 a month including a 10 year 100k warranty. The wife has the larger Subaru Accent with 3 rows, its a six seater as it has captains chairs so people can get in to the 3rd row. I think hers is maybe 1.9% over 6 years and $450 a month we put down maybe $10k on it.

I don't think you need to waste time interviewing 25 RE agents, they will all be falling over themselves to work with you. The seller pays the 5-6% commission, and seller agent will generally split it 50/50 with your buyers agent, if you don't have one they will keep it all for themselves. We used one who was a relation of a former-worker and friend. Because we had a 1-2h drive out and back she would preview some and then we would come at the weekend and look at 2-3 each time. The biggest thing that helps you save time is if they have a floor-plan in the pictures, you can spot a lot of issues there, with choppy / bad layouts and wasted space.

You can pretty much see all properties on Zillow.com, the RE agent will have their own platform and that can sometimes show a property a few days before it posts on Zillow. It took us nearly 2 years when we were moving out of the city to find and buy a house we could both agree on (and met my criteria on paper) there were others that we offered on, but emotion based buyers were willing to bid higher than the value I calculated for them so we lost them. On that was way overpriced came back 6 months later asking if we were still interested and ended up selling for less than we had offered.

Nutmegger

I think the stuff they use these days doesn't devour things the way it did once -- my OH's vehicle is 12 years old, my truck 10 years, and my ragtop 30 (though it stays home in the snow!). They are checked underneath regularly and we aren't about to go through the bottom . . .

tht

They also have car washes in CT, so you can go and have the underside washed after a snow/salt event...

cautiousjon

Perhaps your husband's boss was referring to the Honda Odyssey. In the USA, you'll find that car park spaces are generally larger than they are in the UK, which means that the space between cars is greater too. Some car parks have dedicated space between each car park space as well, such as the one below:


img]https://i.imgur.com/D2j2Kz1.jpg
This is a great point. I live in Georgia, which has a much milder climate, so my utility bills will invariably be very different to folks who live in the NE.
We interviewed three, and we chose one of those three. I was specifically looking to work with a realtor who buys and sells a lot of houses every month as they would have basically seen anything and everything that can go wrong with a real estate transaction and know how to deal with it. We had a great experience with our realtor and her office staff.

civilservant

In the spring maybe. When it comes to the summer the AC is cranked 24/7 in the civilservant household

cautiousjon

Haha, true. We moved to Georgia in late August so we haven't experienced the full brunt of summer yet. I don't like to feel hot, so we'll probably run our a/c 24/7 too.

Nutmegger

We have oil heating and electric hot water (and just two people using it). Oil deliveries are regular all winter, but none over the summer, so it averages out to $230 per month. Electricity runs between $120 and 140 per month, but we do not use the a/c. Another Fairfield County expense -- snow plowing. We have a big job for the plower, so it runs about $100 per visit; a small job would probably start at around $25 per visit. And many towns don't have garbage pickup, so it is DIY or pay a hauler. (I know that one of the towns the OP is considering, Ridgefield, does not have pickup.)

tht

For what I assume is finance / tech that seems like a pretty normal comp range.

CV19 aside an L1a can be filled premium, if the form has done them before and has all the company related paperwork and good lawyers you could get one done in a month or 2 if you pushed it (the long pole is often getting all the paperwork together). As an aside a EB1c Green card can be applied for totally independent of the L1a, so they could file the I140 at the same time as the L1a and no need to wait till you are here.

It will take you months to get an EAD and be able to work as an L2. One of the benefits of the US tax system is "joint filing" so you get a combined allowance so not working actually pays better than the cost of childcare in some cases.

Calli

ahh that’s super helpful to know about the green card. Yes it’s finance/tech. They have an expensive lawyer who should be able to jump some hurdles, I know some employers worry that people will leave once they get the green card but he is not remotely interested in doing that. If he wanted to switch companies he would do that in the UK

tht

The area I would focus on is the “parachute” it’s not like the UK, no redundancy process or pay is required, and until you get a green card you can only work for the sponsoring employer... so if they decided to terminate him at will (can be for no reason, and in some cases same day...) you could have a lot of things to pay for in the US and no legal right to remain here beyond a week or 2. Also note that while all the things like flights home are nice, there is a good chance they are taxable...