Originally Posted by scshift
This might not be the best place to ask, but with so many different NTers all living in apartment style homes, I'll give it a shot.
Which major city has the lowest cost of living? I'd love to live in a bachelor style apartment when I leave college and I'd prefer that it be furnished a little nicer, even if that means moving cities. I haven't even entered college yet so relocating isn't a huge deal, but I love city life and I'm sure some places are cheaper to live than others.
Houston is one city I'm very interested in. The higher-end apartments there were incredibly cheap compared to my native Boston, not to mention the weather and city itself were both great. How does it rank compared to other cities?
You have the right idea, the South is ridiculously cheaper than either coast and up north. Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, OKC, Tulsa, Albequerque, St Louis, Kansas City, etc. Of course, it somewhat evens out in that you make less money generally but it goes further if you understand what I mean. Also, you don't have to live in studio "apartments" that are the size of what we call walk in closets down bottom. Like I said above, I bought a new construction house with a 3 car garage for under $100 sq/ft. It's Elgin though, which is a small rural town 10miles outside of a mid sized Army town (Lawton) with about a 180k population, same house would be about $115-120 a sq/ft in Lawton, in fact my same builder has a neighborhood here in town, and he charges 198k for it here.
There is a Cost of Living Calculator here
http://cgi.money.cnn.com/...living/costofliving.html you can use as a reference. Also check out
http://www.bestplaces.net/ for some ideas. Austin is a city I have been hearing so much about, particularly being a place for young professionals, that I really want to go check out myself one day. I hear decent things about North Carolina too.
Originally Posted by LyonBC1
smiley: pimpMan, props to everyone in this thread...truly inspirational for a college kid like myself still stuck in the slum school apts smiley: laughsmiley: laugh but I had a question for some of the guys posting their spots on here though. All of you guys have pretty dope places for yourselves, but I was wondering (not trying to get in anybody's personal business) at about what age were you able to afford a good downpayment on some of these spots? I guess, did any of you live at home w/parents while you got a solid job in order to save up....or did you just start out w/ a small spot that allowed you to save up till you were able to get the newer places posted in here?.....again sorry for the long post but I'm trying to get an idea of what some other people have done once they finished school...i'm trying to get on that level..but plz lemme know if I'm asking something thats more personal, I dont wanna step on anybody's toes
I, like 4wrestling, saved tons of money by going to school here locally. It has expanded more since then so I doubt they still do, but in the 00's they used to come through the high school and make it rain with scholarships. As long as you maintained like a C average, you'd get at least a yr free to some school and then you just stay in good academic standing and they'll renew or have some good assistance so I didn't pay much of anything for school. My parents bought my first car when I was 15 and my sophomore year bought my current car so tons of savings there.
I wasn't even really thinking about buying until about 5 months ago. My duplex lease was coming up and I looked at the rental market and wasn't excited about anything so I started talking to a realtor since I look at housing sites all day at work anyways out of boredom. My parents convinced me go new construction or under 10yrs since most builders do a 2/10yr warranty.
I have great parents and they live in a huge house so they had no problem with me moving back in in Sept since I wouldn't really be able to find somewhere to stay on a short team lease or would have to pay an extra surcharge of usually 100$ a month for short term lease. So I've been here a couple months just stacking up as I'm looking.
While 20% is recommended, you really don't have to put any money down if you don't want. It's such a buyer's market, you can move in with literally nothing out of pocket; get the seller to pay all or most of your closing, give you a fridge, make some renovations to your liking, literally just go for it all. I probably could have gotten a lot more but I was just excited when he told me the house came back on the market and I could have it, I didn't even try to lowball him or squeeze a fence + fridge out of him (at $18 a foot that fence is going to cost me a bit). Also, OK has a bond money program where they'll give me 3.5% free and I don't have to pay it back unless I move out the house in less than 5 yrs.
Whether or not, "in this economy," is a good time to buy a house or not is totall subjective. Some will say it's the best time because prices and rates are down. Others will say it's a bad time because of that. You're not going to get that quick appreciation of value like a decade ago, in fact your house will probably drop considerably the first yr, but that's up to you whether you see it as an investment and/or as a place to live and if you plan to sell soon. You can research a lot of that type of information on zillow.com, realtor.com and trulia.com too. Just google the address of the house you want info on or the neighborhood and they'll give you that type of stuff like what it last sold for, estimated current value, appreciation/depreciation pie charts, and all that.
I don't have exact stats, but the south and midwest are going to be your cheapest options (I know this just from watching a ton of House Hunters and Property Virgins Laugh). Cali and the North East are way more expensive. And for the NE, I would say of the major cities, prices probably go in order of NYC ... Boston ... DC ... Philly/Baltimore.
Truth. I like Property Brothers too. Then the DIY channel I have to give props for having SO MANY cute white woman contractors, since generally you'd expect a female carpenter to be butch as hell and wear flannel shirts but they got like 10 of them and all are attractive women (yes I know, it's on purpose), and all the Crashers shows are entertaining.
