Property taxes

[TheKid]

It's getting to that time to move out of NY. These taxes are murder. I assume a rural type of area would feature low cost homes with low taxes, but I don't really want to be too far from grocery stores. Up to 10 miles would be OK. The cheaper the house the better, because I plan on installing solar panels and either a windmill or a watermill if close enough to a river, to supply electricity. Some sort of high speed internet, preferably DSL or cable would be a plus. Also, electric assist bikes must be legal. Weatherwise, not too cold in the winter, and little snow. I like the cold weather, but it's bad for my arthritis. Heat isn't a problem, there's always A/C, but no further south than the Carolinas. I'll be moving in about two years. Any suggestions?

[dharouff]

I don't think you'll find such a place, low cost homes usually means there are no jobs. I think 80% of my taxes are for schools, property tax runs me ~$300 a month :eek:. Close to a river excludes quite a bit but most waterways some government body has say over what they will let you do with it. Central Nebraska has fiber to the houses that are miles apart, thanks to the owlie gore tax on your phone bill, yet they have no ISP they can connect through :confused:(it gets darn cold there).
There is a big stripe from the east coast to central Kansas that MIGHT fit some of your requirements it would just be finding it.

I could go on a little longer but if you find it we all may move there.:D :D

[TheKid]

I don't need a job, so that's not a problem. If no waterways are available for energy, windmills and solar panels will suffice. The phone and ISP's are the main rub, especially the cost of satdish internet service. School taxes here on Long Island are $6000+ per year, plus another $3000 for county and town taxes, so $300 per month isn't bad, although I've heard that there are some areas of the country where the taxes are even less than that.

[Wood Butcher]

I feel your pain about NY taxes. I'm in Cortland County (halfway between Syracuse and Binghamton) and the combined taxes (property and school) are costing me about $6200 per year. This is for a 2400 sq. ft. brick house on a 70x120 lot. We are looking to move just over the state line into PA (my job is in Elmira), where the taxes are significantly lower.

I've lived a number of places around the country, and based on your list of requirements/desires/plans (not too cold, little snow, use of solar panels and/or windmills, broadband access), Albuquerque, NM would be my recommendation. That is if you don't mind moving west as well as south. I'd be there in a heartbeat given the opportunity.

[TheKid]

That's one choice. I have a cousin who lives there. He says it sometimes gets to 100+ F, but it's a dry heat, and it's not nearly as bad as 85 F with 70% humidity. I'm hoping to stay east if possible to be closer to my brother, sister, nieces and nephews. But going west isn't out of the question.
The combined taxes here are over $9000 for a 1500 sq.ft. house on a 40 x 100 lot. Many downstaters think it's so much cheaper to live upstate. They don't believe me when I tell them it's not much better up there, and some areas, like where my cousin's summer house was in Sullivan County, don't have basic services like garbage pickup. Good luck on your move. It's like getting a raise just by relocating.

[dharouff]

Albuquerque is nice been there a couple of times. Also appears my taxes aren't as bad as others have to pay, 1700 sq ft brick ranch style house on 3/4 acre. My wife moved from Pittsburgh to Omaha,NE and away from her family we go to Pittsburgh once or twice a year so she can get her family fix. But she really like the true midwest people. (Ohio isn't midwest). When I can retire not sure if I'll move. The winters here hit -20 F sometimes.

[TheKid]

So far, the area of Hodges, SC seems to be good. Taxes are very low, public water and sewers are available, as is cable TV. Since I don't need a large house, I may use the option of buying a small lot and having a house built with energy conservation in mind. I have a relative who did this, and he says the cost of converting a conventional home is prohibitive and more difficult to achieve the most benefits. He has the plans for his house, which can be scaled down to suit my needs. The construction consists basically of a slab with block walls, solar panels, and heat pumps, with one or two windmills. There are other technical aspects too complicated to discuss here. He lived in northern New Jersey, and he had oil heat as a backup. To heat and cool his house in the eighties to the late nineties when he moved, averaged $600 per year. From what I have learned so far, I could buy property and build a 2 B/R, 1 Bath home for under $125,000, which includes solar panels, electric heat, and central air. The beauty of the slab/block construction, is the ability to set aside one room with unfinished walls and floor for bike building, that is heated in the winter and cooled in the summer.

[n9viw]

Kid, I hear ya. Where we live, we get the perks, I guess: cable internet and TV, electricity, gas, water, sewer, waste removal, brush removal, etc. But that all comes with the requisite costs that get more expensive every year. We're close to all the "important" things: public transportation, shopping, schools, parks, banks, etc. To its credit, we could bicycle to just about anything we wanted, including fine dining, theater, movies, shopping, or whatever, if we wanted to brave the heavy suburban traffic.

However, we also get the downsides: Obviously, the traffic, as I mentioned. Also, our property taxes are over three grand a year now, and our mortgage payment is close to $1,500/mo. We live directly under the outbound flight path of a major runway at nearby O'Hare airport. We live close to a busy street that goes to a local hospital (which means ambulances at all hours of the day and night), and near a major highway (which is fortunately far enough away to only sound like a constant wind in the trees). We get the zoning and property laws that grow more draconian every year (I'm surprised nobody's said anything about the chimney on my garage, or the chickens in my yard!), and the paid private snoops (paid by me, incidentally, with my tax dollars) to find out who's doing what wrong in the neighborhood, and who needs to tax or fine them for it.

Well, I've had enough of it. My wife and I are making a break for it, but to nowhere you'd want to go, it sounds like. We're nothing quite so persnickety as all that. ;)

As soon as our house here in the Chicago 'burbs sells, we're moving to the smallest, poorest county in MO, near of the smallest towns.... Worth, population 94 ("SA-LUTE!!" ;) ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worth,_Missouri . And for two burgeoning homesteaders, it's WORTH it. :D We got a 2BR, 1BA Cape Cod on a crawl with 6.1 acres, an attached 1.5-car garage, two wells, and 150 mature fruit trees, for less than most people spend on their CARS. Oh, and NO ZONING. That means NO PERMITS. If I want to tear out a wall in my house, have at it. If the house falls on me because I took out that wall, well, it's my own da*n fault. I LIKE that. :eek:

For the first little bit we're there, we'll have NO power, NO plumbing, NO phone, NO cable, nothing but the walls for shelter, the sun for heat, and the night for cool. There's a power cable to the house, but the wiring in the walls is all hand-fished and cloth-wrapped, so who knows how good it is. There's also municipal water to the house, but it's not hooked up to anything, since all the CPVC pipes froze and broke one year. No gas, although we can have a company come rent us a LP tank, and they'll even hook it up for us, for a charge of course. No phone line, I don't know if the pole at the end of the drive has phone on it or not. The waste pipe on the house is highly illegal, it simply goes ... somewhere. No known septic tank or field, it just goes away in a vague northerly direction.

We have wood stoves we'll be hooking up to the existing chimneys, so we can cook, boil water, and heat with those. We have a porta-potty we use while camping, so we can use that until I get the plumbing sorted out. As for the no phone and no cable, we'll have our cell phones, but until we get power to the house, we'll be charging them in the car. And no phone or cable means no internet... I imagine my wife will have a hairy screaming withdrawal fit somewhere in the first couple months, but after that's over, we should be okay.

It's not like we're in the middle of nowhere... Worth (the town) is about three miles away, but doesn't really have any businesses to speak of. Grant City is maybe six miles away, and has a few small-town amenities, but no "civilization". Maryville is about a half hour away, over maybe 30 miles of twisting, hilly roads. They have a WalMart (woo, way to go, civilization...), fast food, restaurants, hotels, businesses, etc. It'd be here we'd probably be looking for jobs... if we were looking for any!

With the sale of our house here in the 'burbs, we should walk away with almost as much as I make in a year. We'll have no debt but our school loans, no utilities (yet), no mortgage. Understandably, we'll have to keep our purchases to a minimum with no income, but we can probably make that last a LONG time, if our current practices have anything to show for it. We may get jobs, eventually, but probably only part-time.

I'm tired of busting my butt for someone else, and having Uncle Sam take the lion's share of it through the various taxes we pay. Tired of the congestion, tired of the noise, tired of feeling impotent over the issues I can't control yet which control me... I'm tired of being tired, and I'm getting out.

[dharouff]

I live ~80 (a guess) miles north and west of were you are going. If the house has a fuse panel and still has the 15 amp fuses the wiring 'should ' be ok until you get around to replacing it. Have the wells tested, the water may be better than the district water at just the cost to pump it. I live in a bedroom community outside Omaha. with a train main line through it, amazing you don't really hear it after a while. Septic systems aren't bad if you know where they are, depending on the tank they should be pumped every 5-8 years. (I lost a 21 acre place 7 years ago in a divorce)

OOOOoooooooo!!!! back to dial up internet!!!!!!!!

[Richie Rich]

You mentioned Albuquerque, NM....I was watching one of the Real Estate shows on cable tonight and they said that it's a 'Buyer's Market' in Albuquerque with over 6,000 houses to choose from. You might get a great deal if you shop around out there.

Best of luck....

--{RR}--

[Pagan Wizard]

Kid, I hear ya. Where we live, we get the perks, I guess: cable internet and TV, electricity, gas, water, sewer, waste removal, brush removal, etc. But that all comes with the requisite costs that get more expensive every year. We're close to all the "important" things: public transportation, shopping, schools, parks, banks, etc. To its credit, we could bicycle to just about anything we wanted, including fine dining, theater, movies, shopping, or whatever, if we wanted to brave the heavy suburban traffic.

However, we also get the downsides: Obviously, the traffic, as I mentioned. Also, our property taxes are over three grand a year now, and our mortgage payment is close to $1,500/mo. We live directly under the outbound flight path of a major runway at nearby O'Hare airport. We live close to a busy street that goes to a local hospital (which means ambulances at all hours of the day and night), and near a major highway (which is fortunately far enough away to only sound like a constant wind in the trees). We get the zoning and property laws that grow more draconian every year (I'm surprised nobody's said anything about the chimney on my garage, or the chickens in my yard!), and the paid private snoops (paid by me, incidentally, with my tax dollars) to find out who's doing what wrong in the neighborhood, and who needs to tax or fine them for it.



I hear ya n9, you forgot to mention the howl of freight trains at all hours of the night, and the iminent threat of flooding. When my mother and I bought this house less than four years ago, the property taxes were just over $3100 a year, now they are just over $4000.......in less than 4 years. My property taxes are going up faster than my pay raises, so I could eventually get taxed out of my own home. Where you and I live (in Cook County Illinois.....but in seperate suburbs) the county board president has just managed to raise the tax rate to 10.25%....which is the highest tax rate in Illinois. A neighboring county, Lake County to be exact, has a tax rate of a whole whopping 6%. Some of the suburbs in north western Cook County are banding together with the possibilities of disbanding from Cook County and either developing a new county, or joining Lake County because of how out of control Cook County is........makes me awefully glad I voted against these morons who are running this county. I know there is very little I can do about my situation, short of moving out, but with my mothers health, I know I couldn't afford another move, even if my wallet could afford the move.

[n9viw]

Kwetz,

Part of the reason we're making the break now is BECAUSE we're in good health. I don't want to wind up like my parents, who bought a place up in west central WI, and now can barely keep up with the place because they're in their 70s.

I understand that moving to a rural locale will place us beyond the reach of "modern medicine", but with careful work and good diet, we should be fine for now. There's an "acute care center" for broken legs and stitches and such just up the road in Grant City, and a major hospital over in Maryville. God willing, we won't need that one!