NW-Bound
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- Joined
- Jul 3, 2008
- Messages
- 35,712
This is helpful. I think I am more about 3% at my weekend house and .75% at my DC row house. The DC house is about twice as valuable as the weekend place (that .75 would be more like 2 or more for an equivalent house in a more reasonably priced area) but the weekend place is way more expensive since it is free standing (more exposed) has a lot of grounds and a pool, and requires more hired help to maintain. It is more valuable than an equivalent house that wasn't waterfront so I suspect NW's 4% is a better rule of thumb.
The housing operating cost indeed varies greatly from place to place, even if expressed as percentage of the home value. If my homes were in Southern CA, their values would be about 3x more, but I doubt that the maintenance cost would increase that much because the labor and material costs do not go up by that ratio.
The 4%/yr I quoted for the last 5 years included some expensive maintenance and updates on both homes, which should not be recurrent (siding replacement, roof repair, kitchen counter replacement). I just pulled it off Quicken and did not classify these further than that, but together it runs about 5% for the last 5 years (1%/yr for the 2 homes together).
For reference, my urban home is in the metropolitan Phoenix, while my 2nd home is in the high country of AZ. RE taxes are not bad here. They run about 0.6%/yr of the home market values.
... $3000/yr utilities...
You made me look. My urban home electric+water bills run $4K/yr. My high country home costs $700/yr. The 2nd place needs no AC cooling, uses little water (no pool, no vegetable garden), and we are not there much in the winter, else it could cost a lot more for heating.
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