Buying a home

[wayupnorth]

Portland Maine is not very different, Terry. My niece has a nice house there and though the city does take care of the sidewalks, you are responsible to keep the sidewalk clear in front of your property after every snowstorm. Her water and sewer rates are outrageous for just one person, plus she has to pay a separate storm water fee every bill, going into the sewer system or not. They have to buy special garbage bags and recycle everything. Because she is in a historic district but her house is far from anything historic, she cant do many things, including replacement windows. I'm glad I am in a town of 2000 people and have well water, septic and little enforcement of what you want to do. Our houses are valued the basically the same, although mine is larger and her property tax is twice what mine is. But I would never shy away from buying as it eventually will be yours and it should gain equity if homework is done right on the total buying process. I was 22 when I bought my first place and my payment was $69 a month and I wondered if I could really afford that. I did, bought and sold more properties and now I am in the place I always wanted to be in and its all paid for now. [this post was last edited: 1/17/2016-15:51]

 

[rp2813]

Sidewalks

Gee, now I don't feel so bad!  And yeah, the sweep was a result of a complaint about sidewalks, supposedly in front of 19 properties up and down the street.  The inspector went wild with the spray paint.  Some people are having to replace their entire driveway approaches as well.  I don't think the complainer realized that they were going to trigger all of this additional work beyond the sidewalk fixes.

 

It's been many years since the city took over billing for garbage and recycling.  They would bill six times a year.  A few months ago as a result of a cost-cutting measure, we received our last bill from them.  The city disbanded its billing department and now all garbage and recycling charges appear on our annual county property tax bill.

 

I'm not happy about this.  Part of our motivation for buying my sister out of her interest in the home my parents bought in 1960 was the ability to swing a parent-to-child transfer of the Proposition 13 property tax rate, which is so insanely low that we can manage to write a check to the county rather than have an impound account on our mortgage.   With garbage fees added, our property tax bill increased by $385 per year.  No matter how you slice it, we're paying the same amount for garbage, but it didn't sting as much when it was around $64 every other month. 

 

As a homeowner, you really have to think it over before voting for things like parks, library, transportation and a host of other tax measures that appear on almost every ballot.

[this post was last edited: 1/17/2016-16:22]

 

[gusherb]

Our town just got done doing a town wide curb and driveway skirt replacement project, including replacing broken sidewalk portions. They do require you keep sidewalks clear after a snow but hardly anyone follows that's including the town itself and they don't enforce it very strictly either.

Water, sewer, trash, and storm water are all in one bill, usually about $70 a month with a water guzzler washer and one of the three toilets is a water guzzler. There's no option for showers, only water guzzler for us. When it was all low flow it was only about $5 a month cheaper so no big difference.

Property values are pretty low. $250,000 will get you a 2,000 sqft home from the 1990s in a nice part of town. 1 million buys you a mansion. (Not a McMansion)

 

[dartman]

My sidewalk was added when they rehabbed this house. They force anyone adding or fixing a old house to add them if there were none before the work. My neighborhood is in a slightly depressed area so houses here tend to be cheaper and the flippers keep buying up the bigger lots that had nice older houses on them. They knock down the house and put up mc mansions, connected town houses, or apartments. They put three tall skinny mc mansions in what used to be part of my backyard before the realtor bought it and split the property up to make even more money.
The old nice 2 br house with two stories and a basement, with a big 2.5 car standalone garage was bought by a developer because it has a long deep lot so he's going to put townhouses or apartments in its place soon. It's across the street and Portland decided to allow very tight housing density here seeing how most folks here don't have the money to fight them and they get more taxes per acre that way.

 

[tolivac]

No sidewalks in any of the subdivisions outside of the city-and trash is YOUR responsibility-you can pay a private trash company to take it-or take it to the transfer station yourself-I do this.the station has a compactor for regular trash(Baker)dumpsters for recyclables,cardboard-paper,other dumpsters for furniture,electronic goods,applainces.A small container for glasses(eyeglasses)another large dumpster for yard waste-and even another for spent oyster shells-these are recycled for paving.The private trash services cost $300-400 per year.In the city they now have ASL trash trucks(McNeilius on Peterbuilt chassis).They used to use Manual RL trucks.EZ Pack.The private companies use Pak-Mor,EZ-Pak,NewWay,And McNeilius.Its a great place for trash truck spotters.I like them in the same way as disposers.Sometimes a kind driver will do a pack cycle for me or work the cart tippers for me.Sometimes when I take my trash to the "dump" I bring something back-like books or something out of the electronics-appliances dumpster-A Pilot amp and a Hoover Celebrity vacuum that was in good shape.