In Texas, property taxes are public record. You can search <name of county> CAD. CAD stands for County Appraisal District. Then once on the website you can search by address and it will give you all of the tax breakdown for that property.

Don't know about the Midwest but I'd think that info would be online somewhere.

Property taxes are usually at the bottom of a Zillow listing - if you cant find the exact home you are looking at then a similar one within a couple blocks will likely be pretty close.

1600 for a 200k house seems like a pretty good estimate to work off of - highly doubtful if property taxes are out of whack in the area you are searching that you could get a livable house for 200k anyway. My taxes are 'only' about 3300 but if my house were 2 miles west and over the state line they would be closer to 9900

Property tax valuation in today's mail. +34%

Thing is, the value seems pretty right for our market, so I guess I can't complain.

not living on an estate, but living in a state w/out sales tax
3br, 2ba house built in 1955 on 3/4 acre



that's the equivalent annual cost of paying 8% on $139k of taxable purchases
we're not spending anywhere close to ~$12k a month on merchandise.

Don’t feel too bad, I pay $3800 on a home I bought for 110k and I pay 6% sales tax.

The good news is my house is worth over 200k now and we have a cap on property tax rises. The bad news is that houses in my neighborhood have a hard time selling due to the insane tax rate.

Good lord!

If mine jumps that much, it'll be over $300! *gasp*

Jeffco makin it rain at my expense too

I'm quite jealous of these numbers while living in New York.

My monthly payment:

Principal $391.53
Interest $511.81
Escrow for Taxes/Insurance $1515.08

Looking at houses that should hopefully be in my price range for the Vegas housing market on Zillow, it seems like there's nicer options for townhomes/condos over houses... In the $300-$350k range. I'm single so I'm thinking correctly right? Most in my demographic would prefer that route? Thoughts?

Thanks.

Be sure to check out HOA fees for those.

Even ignoring HOA issues, there is big difference between owning a house vs a Condo. Many pluses and minuses to each.

Single family detached... much better in my humble O.

uniformity of a condominium is good, but many times those units with a common wall can have common issues like a common attic, plumbing issues, fire issues, HOA nazi'ism, high turn over rate, noise abatement and many more. just because they can potentially have these things does not mean that every owner will experience them, but those potential issues might rear their ugly head and be prepared for them to occur.

My preference is for a town home over a Condominium... in that a Condo can be any configuration including stacked, town homes are generally single level common wall layouts (even if they are 2 story/multi-story units)

I guess the Xcel contractor was here while I was out and about today, and installed a new smart meter.

Most of the purpose of this seems to be to give the utility more-granular use data, so they can charge more at peak time usage (or less for non-peak).

The old display was simple: flashed a number of kWh, so I could watch it get smaller over time.

The new one displays a bunch of different data. I couldn't figure any of it out, and couldn't find a guide to tell me what all this data represented. Called Xcel, and Vanessa walked me through all the numbers. Turns out to be mostly, a code number, then a total associated with that code.

For example, code 20 is net generated by my solar system. Up to 4 so far; seems about right.

Since my reading yesterday (old meter) was something like 81194, I'm expecting a bill for ~8800 kWh coming soon.

Is that a planned thing? I still have the one that just flashes the number.

Don't know if I should be worried - I had an electrician upgrade my service from 150 to 200 amps. He obviously had the ability to break and re-seal the anti-tamper thing.

I believe it's planned.



I asked a few neighbors today if they had one done today, nobody said yes. Not sure if I'm ahead or behind the rest of the area, but I would've expected them to knock out an area all at once.

Seems like I got both voice and e-mails a little while back to warn me. There was an option to skip, but didn't really look into that.

these smart meters are rolling out in Ireland also , my brother had his installed last week, not spoke to him about it yet but i have recently bought a house and the meter is being moved from inside the house to outside and at same time they will do smart meter i assume.

I read a some posts on a busy irish forum/boards and its kinda 50/50 as to what people think will be better for end user. Either way i will get the smart meter as i am pretty sure most of my usage will be off peak.

Now that I think about it they installed this type of meter in my old house in St. Louis a couple months before I moved. Power was out about a minute while they did the swap.

It would be sweet if the meter could connect to your wifi and presented a website where you could monitor your usage and adjust accordingly. Maybe they're moving, or already have, to how industry is billed for power.

My first job out of college was with an energy management startup that would help reduce your electrical bill. I designed a device that you could connect three amp meters and it would record the current used by the three phases entering the factory/office/whatever. At the time the electric company would track your utilization in 15 minute increments and whatever period you used the most would determine your rate.

Our device would track that and you could determine how and when you were using the most electricity and then you would adjust your utilization to flatten the peaks. Our model was a factory that had a lot of motors that sucked a ton of current when starting but otherwise were fairly efficient. Every morning at 6 am or whenever they would start everything at once and that 15 minute window would shoot their utilization through the roof then the rest of the day it would be fairly level. Unfortunately, their rate was disproportionate to their utilization. They put a plan together to start everything over a 60 minute period and it cut their electricity bill nearly in half. They incurred other expenses like having people come in earlier to start the process but they saved a ton of money.

These guys seem to do exactly what we did but way more advanced. We were doing our thing in the mid 90s.

We failed because we were comically underfunded but the core concept was there and it was a pretty easy sale to a company. We were so underfunded they didn't want to spend the $2,000 to build five prototypes. Ugh.

The tin-foil hat types came out of the woodwork when APS rolled out "smart meters" in our area a few years back. I'm not sure what they thought they were monitoring that they weren't already monitoring (power usage, for example).

You can! I use a Rainforest Eagle and (optionally) the wattvision.com website. The Eagle talks to my meter using Zigbee. It gives you everything from instantaneous usage to daily, weekly and monthly.

BTW, on a related note.... I just recently got a Flume water tracking device. It sits next to your water meter and detects the little wheels spinning inside. It will provide water usage stats right to your phone. It will even categorize the usage as shower/dish washer/toilet/sprinklers etc. It will also send an alert if it detects any leaks. I love this thing.

My water company has a rebate on the Flume.

It took quite a while of digging, but I found links on Xcel's website which let me download a pdf explaining the different things the meter is displaying.

Also found a spot where it gave quite detailed info. Apparently 15% of my use is appliances. Seems like I had to find a smart meter info page, and drill several links through that.

Of course, none of this is exposed under the '"usage" section of their website. That still gives me the same view as before; a few options to graph your use, but only on a monthly basis.

When questioned about this, a CSR told me that it might be a few days til my account switches over to smart meter reporting on the website.

Because, you know, real-time data transformation isn't a thing. Sigh.

This is cool.

I'm going to get one of the water tracking devices - leaning toward the Moen Flo because it can turn your water off if it detects a leak or you can do it remotely. I'll look at the Flume.

I know insurance companies give discounts for leak detection. I didn't know until a friend of mine had a faucet valve break when they were out and in the two hours the water was running it caused $120k worth of damage to the house. Granted, it's a nice house but wow. He got a leak detection thing and saved himself another disaster when another faucet broke.

Water is a home's worst enemy.

The great thing about the Flume is the trivial install. Other leak detectors require the device to be inserted into the waterline. Usually by a plumber. The Flume just sits next to your water meter. A grandma could install it.

It's also a nice way to measure the amount of water you are using for various sprinkler zones. No need to guess how much water your sprinkler heads are outputting.

BTW, the Flume is so sensitive that I can see when I get a drink of water...

Speaking of sprinklers, my suburb had a deal with a place called Rachio last summer. Came out and did a sprinkler survey to help me make it more efficient. Then installed a nice new controller with a rain sensor. All for free.

Good little app. The sensor works well to shut off cycles when it's going to or is raining. Just got a notification that it's not doing the garden zone with our upcoming showers.

Something to look into for those in sprinkler areas--see if your local water company has some kind of efficiency review you can get in.

I have a Rachio! Make sure you have wifi access at the place you put the controller. The app isn't the best designed but it's workable. All the variables used for determining and adjusting watering frequency are mostly undocumented so it can be pretty tricky to get things just right.

But over all, I like it.

Master BR has a large (~95"x45") window. Fixed middle pane, sliding vents on each end, if that matters.

For years, I've had a set of faux-wood blinds in there, 3 on one rail. Smaller on the ends, roughly the size of each opening, and one larger in the middle. I've had to replace them a few times over the years when something failed. Of course, it's kinda bulky/a hassle when throwing something that large/heavy up there as needed.

I want to do something different--maybe three independent blinds. Shutters seem like a more permanent solution, so I'm investing those as well. May be fake wood again, or real wood--just getting some people out for estimates now.

Any experience/opinions/caveats with interior shutters you can throw my way?