Mongtomery county, MD. – Could be anywhere in the DC area. Tell ya what.. it has everything you’d want. Good schools, a million retaurants, shops, movie theatres, malls, access to Washington and Baltimore – a thriving music and theatre scene in DC – its a nice place to live.
But is it worth it? Of late, I have looked around my home.. which costs upward of 300k, and noted.. its a townhouse.. and I cant see us ever really getting out of the townhouse market. We would just upgrade townhouses and neighborhoods.
Of late, I’ve wondered.. could I deal with less on-camera work, maybe just write and make movies for a few years, and get out of this area? My buddy Steve is in Nebraska – and I make fun of him.. its Nebraska – BUT – his house is three times as large as mine for half the price. He has disposable income.. and time to spare.
I start to feel like I dont quite know why I’m here anymore. There’s more work.. but its commercials and industrials.. and thats not why I wanted to act. Ive started to wonder if I could be happy in a smaller community.. outside another big city – Omaha, or Salt lake, or Timonium, or outside Chicago – there are small towns that cost a lot less – and i kind of want my kid to have a yard.
Hrm.
House, kids, cat.
House: $109,000 Cat: $70 to get her fixed Kids: priceless
Probably be hard on your acting career to live in Utah unless you want to do a lot of stage work. We have quite a few good theaters.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Isn’t it obvious?
Lancaster’s convenient to Philadelphia and Baltimore, has a fair amount of live theatre itself (particularly of the Christian bent) and, while not as cheap as the price Matt just mentioned, for the money you’re paying for a townhouse you could get a nice yard (with a water feature, even), and 2,800 sft. Give me a call–I’ll set you up.
Hm..
Of course.. there needs to be a thriving corporate area within an hour so my wife (the sugar mama) can get a good paying HR job.
If PA comes up more, we’ll drop you a line.
(Ek.. and Christian theatre.. no thanks… love God, but Christian theatre is “God” awful)
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
mama mia
Ahh, to be a kept man. How would it be?
—
Matthew P. Barnson
And that’s just
And that’s just Daniel’s guest house.
Ba da bing!
Not NY
I was looking for a wood chipper to help clear my yard, since I’m in the middle of 2 wooded acres (paid $65K for 2 acres, $235K to build my 3400 sqft house, which is worth $450K now). Plus side, I can’t see my neighbors in the spring, and barely see them in the winter (yea leaves!!!). Put in a pool and a deck, and hope to finish the basement this winter (another 1800 sqft). My propery taxes are right around 3K/yr.
I found a guy selling a wood chipper in NY. He’s up in the hills, but about the same latitude as NYC, just more west. He had a nice spread, with pond, about 2 acres, landscaped patios, garage, and barn. The house was older (70s or 80s), but he was hoping to get about $450K for it. He obviously put a lot of time into it, and I asked him why he was moving.
He pays $10,200 a year in property taxes. In South Carolina, he’s getting a $450 house near the beach and paying $922 a year in taxes.
I think part of the problem living in states with big cities. How much of our tax money in MD goes to Baltimore and areas by DC? In NY, I bet a bunch of their tax money goes to NYC. In South Carolina, who are you supporting? In Nebraska, I bet Topeka’s tax draw doesn’t compare to Baltimore’s. Salt Lake City isn’t probably a big draw either.
Pennsylvania has Philly, but it’s also a much more populous state, so the burden is spread out more.
This is all just conjecture by me, but I’m looking forward to buying my 20,000 acre ranch in Montana soon, for $200K 😉
My $.02 Weed
It’s a toss-up
There’s a reason why real estate in this area is so expensive. It’s a desirable area.
While I’d rather have paid $100K less for my house, wild horses couldn’t drag me away from the Northeast. (Apologies to Matt, Sam, and other mid-country dwellers.) For me, it’s a balancing of interests — I want to pay as little as possible to get as close as possible to the cultural and other opportunities provided by urban centers.
Yes, I recognize that there’s good theatre and good restaurants in other parts of the country, where cost-of-living is cheaper (after all, I sang at opera festivals in Natchez, Mississippi, and Des Moines, Iowa), but I *like* the Baltimore/DC Metro area. I’d rather live here and pay more for a house than live in Nebraska. As it is, I’m a half hour from Baltimore, an hour from DC, an hour and a half from Philadelphia, four hours from NYC, and six hours from Boston. That’s what I call convenient.
Now, I’m also not in Montgomery County, which I find to be ridiculously overpriced and overcrowded. For the $300K you pay for a townhouse down there, I got a very nice house with a yard in Carroll County. This is, again, a toss-up — I’m surrounded by ignoramuses, for example.
OK, I’m starting to ramble. Weed, what do you need with 3400 sq ft?
— Ben
Need? What is need?
We have a four bedroom place, with the master on the ground level and three upstairs. Since we have 2 1/2 kids, those three bedrooms will come in handy. The better questions is what do I need 3400+1800 (basement) = 5200 sqft for?
I guess the answer is that since I have it, I might as well finish it and use it. We’re putting another small bedroom down there for guests or when the wife unit works nights and wants total darkness and noise reduction. Another bedroom means another bathroom. We’re putting in a gym so I can store exercise equipment I don’t use. (Hopefully once my wife isn’t pregnant, working, and finishing up her BSN, we’ll have more time to use it.) Then there’s a storage area. That’s approx 1/2 of the 1800 sq ft. The other ~900 will be the Weed Playhouse, replete with Multimedia center and Game Room.
Of course, that really means it’ll be Weed’s Offspring Playroom. I just have to hope they let me play Ping Pong with them and hope to stay competitive with them in video games.
Could we be happy with less? Yeah, but we could afford it and we had the land. An old-timer around here said the families are getting smaller and the houses are getting bigger. How true that is.
Mind you, I paid $300K for my house two years ago and land, plus another $20K in deck/pool/basement (thank God my father-in-law is a retired carpenter 🙂 and it’ll be worth $500K by the end of the year. Any of the MBAs here can tell you that’s some good appreciation.
And it’ll go up, because our area is around a army base which is absorbing another base and some departments from other bases. They’re planning on 5-10K tech jobs coming in around 5 years from now. Other places’ housing markets might fall, but not here.
Matt, you did catch the part about 5-10K tech jobs, eh? In Aberdeen? Right?
My $.02 Weed
Wow…
Your basement is as big as my house. 😉
— Ben
Tech jobs…
The problem when I was looking at the area was that I’m at the higher end of the pay scale for my area, and probably the middle for the DC area. When I interviewed there before, folks were willing to pay down to the penny exactly what I’m making here.
Live here, $860 house payment. Live there, $1700 house payment. We could make it, there’s no doubt, but we’d have to make some standard-of-living sacrifices. I believe that the reason prices are so much more expensive is because the local economy is built around a two-income family. If my wife could earn even half of what I do, we’d be able to live in the DC area easily.
If you happen to see a UNIX sysadmin job in your local paper that’s paying better than $100K, that might be an incentive to move.
Then again, Oracle has offices near there. If the right job opened up…
Well, that’s still unlikely. We’ve kind of become entrenched out here. Close to family because the family moved out here to be close to us 🙂 What do you do in that situation?
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Good Point
But if they followed you once, they’ll follow you again 🙂
I would imagine once your youngest is of school age, your wife will want to work again because otherwise the boredom would drive her crazy. I know my wife couldn’t not work, because she’d be looney before a week was up.
I have a brother making $100K as a UNIX sysadmin, but they’re making him learn Windows Activde Directory and other things you *nix types find unsavory. And it’s a gov’t job , so you get the gazillion holidays, no ask sick-leave policy, and it’s the gov’t. They won’t fire you unless you force them too, so you can work as hard as you want. 🙂
My $.02 Weed
Lifestyle!!
Matt and I discuss this topic on a regular basis and we always come to the same conclusion. We like having a small house payment so that we can play. If we lived in the big city, I would have to work. Fortunately, I don’t have to work. I can stay home with my cute boys for now and teach them whatever I want them to know before the rest of the world gets ahold of them!
Justin, fortunately for you, as an RN you can get a job anywhere. Depending on your debt load, you could live anywhere you want! Kelly might not have to work if you didn’t live in the big city. If she wanted to, she could take a year or two off and enjoy her new baby and not miss out on any of the firsts!
Weed, I am green with envy. I bet your house is gorgeous, besides huge. But, unless that $300K home comes with a full time maid, I’m not interested in owning a home that big. Especially if I had to work to help with the bills. Who cleans it? My 2000 sq. feet of walls and baseboards are hard enough to keep from being grimy, let alone 3x that much. Though I have to admit, if I could afford a maid, I might do it!
As for Ben, DC is only 4 1/2 hrs. away for us! Okay, so the plane fares aren’t cheap, but I can afford to travel because my cost of living isn’t as expensive as most.
Salt Lake is a big enough city that I have great entertainment, great food, plenty of culture and shopping without dealing with huge city life. And don’t forget we have some of the greatest skiing in the nation!
So Justin, when are you going to bring Kelly and the baby out to check out SLC? We’d love to have you stay with us while you check out Utah. —
Christy
Weed’s house
Weed’s house is slammin’. I can vouch. Tremendous basement.
Ceciltucky
One of the benefits of living away from the city. We’re lucky, we’re as close as Ben to everything East Coast, but still rural enough to be free of a lot of suburban problems.
But don’t worry, it’s creeping to us. We were just lucky to find what we did when we did. Two years later I’d have been SOL, as my property’s price would have tripled or quadrupled.
Blind luck. The guiding force in my life 😉
My $.02 Weed
You Can Stop Making Fun Of Me
Everyone can stop making fun of me for moving to the Minny-Apple now.
Wife Unit and I scored a downtown home with yard in a great neighborhood for a little more than the price of a Timpane Townhouse. The metropolitan area operates as a social utopia, in which a significant property tax is returned in the form of great schools, public services, large theatre scene (2nd largest in the nation), downtown parks, bike commuter trails, urban forest, restaurants, major airport, and industry.
No place is perfect, and the two knocks against living here is that #1) it’s 87% white people and #2) there are days when the wind chill gets below -50.
I found that the perception of east coast cities as the most-desired hubs of culture and industry are just that: a perception. That perception is what translates into higher house prices. I found that the incorrect stereotypes people have of not-east-coast-cities are what keeps my home prices lower and commute to the office under 20 minutes. Simultaneously, I found that leisure time is enjoyable when you’re not house poor and when you’re not spending a minimum of 60 minutes driving to hang out with other friends confined to their homes as a result of house-poorness. Finally, I found a period of 7 consecutive Sundays crossing over between this and last season in which the Redskins were nationally televised, and I watched from the comfort of my basement.
Justin, there are plenty of places in the U.S. to move that offer a great quality of life and living standard. You definitely want to explore the trade-off of $/sq. foot for livability return.
Minneapolis culture featured
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2006-12-01-minneapolis-culture_x.htm
“over the past two years, Minneapolis has taken its underground cultural destination status to a new level…more than $500 million in museum and theater space, arty hotels and buzz-worthy restaurants have been added…”
That’s actually an understatement, as this past calendar year witnessed a record-breaking $650M+ amount of private/public contributions to the arts scene alone.
Texas
When I was going through school, we did a pretty extensive search to find the best salary/cost-of-living ratio. Obviously different places emphasize different industries, but we found that Texas – specifically Dallas – gave us the best bang for the buck.
Here we have national-level salaries, a big telecom industry, the cultural amenities of a big city – and a 3500 sf house with almost 1/2 acre.
For you, Justin, try Houston – its got an extremely active professional theater scene. Don’t know about commercials or other TV work, though.
heh..
It would be fun to live near Van and his soothing Baritone.
Actually we have friends whojust moved to austin from here and love it.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Austin
I didn’t even think about Austin… now there’s a town with an indie music scene. You’d fit right in.
Austin
My company has a one-million-square-foot data center in Austin. We looked at moving there not too long ago…
—
Matthew P. Barnson