Where is your dream home? Many people are drawn to a location, maybe the beach, big city or the suburbs. I personally joke all of the time that if I ever won the lottery real big, I would just buy a small home in a bunch of different locations. That way if I felt like the city one month and the beach the next, I could just go. I must say though my favorite has to be the beach.
Location does play a big part of price. I am going to show you some examples of this. I actually find it very interesting to pick up a local real estate flyer or magazine when I travel to see what the price of real estate is like in that area and this is why.
We are going to use the scenario of a $300,000 home purchase and utilize a 20% down conventional mortgage for each monthly payment example
- Let’s start in my local little suburb of York County. I live in the 17402 zip code and for the lovely price of $300,000, you could purchase a nice detached home with 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths with about 1,700 square feet on a half acre of land and a 2 car garage. This home has real estate taxes of about $4,836 per year making your monthly payment about $1,330
- Now let’s travel together to the city of Washington, DC. We are going to use a home in the 20001 zip code, downtown close to several metro stops. At that same $300,000 sales price you could purchase a gorgeous 1 bedroom, 1 bath 400 square foot condo with a $306 condo fee per month and real estate taxes of $1,747 per year. Your monthly payment would be about $1,460 when including that monthly condo fee noted previously.
- Now let’s go south to one of my favorite locations, the beach, and use a home located in Rehoboth Beach, DE zip code 19971. This time you are purchasing a 3 bedroom, 3 full baths 1,460 square foot 3 story townhouse. This home has real estate taxes of $683 per year and a quarterly homeowners association fee of $750. Your monthly payment would be about $1,302 when including $250 towards your quarterly homeowner’s association fee.
As you can see not only does the size of home differ from location to location but so does your monthly mortgage payment. This has a lot to do with the home’s yearly real estate taxes. I just find it so interesting to see how different the homes can be from location to location. It is also very interesting to see the difference in the yearly real estate taxes from location to location. So if money was not an object, where would your dream home be located?
Realtors Jen and Larry Lindt 