T-Minus 278 Days: All Of Our Possessions

 Today's Video: https://youtu.be/J_onNg4HJ_w

T-Minus 280 Days: ResortTV1

 What do you do when you can't go to Disney whenever you want? One idea is to tune into Resort TV1 on YouTube. They go live on a regular basis. But even when they aren't live, their replays are incredible. The ResortTV1 members (a brother (Josh) and sister (Jenna)) visit the parks and walk around with a camera, filming the parades and rides at 4K as they go. 

They also visit Universal Studios

My favorite is the VLOG Strolls where Josh walks around and narrates what we are seeing. Josh is an expert, so, it is like having your own private tour of the park!

Check them out:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAjpFyA7FCRoGOuj5i4kq9g

T-Minus 281 Days: Property Taxes

 New York has high property taxes. My property taxes are more than my mortgage payment! So, I'm looking forward to moving to Florida for some cheaper property taxes. I will take all that exta money I am giving to the government and turn it into equity!

The taxes are cheaper in Florida versus New York, however... lets not get ahead of ourselves. The property taxes are not free and might not be even as good as you are dreaming about. Lake County Florida (the home of Clermont), for example, has some of the highest median property taxes in the United States.

There are ways to reduce a Florida Property Tax. The Homestead exception will save a lot of money. If the Florida house is your primary residence, you can take $25K of the first $50K off on your taxed amount.  And seniors 65 and over get a Senior Exemption that further lowers the tax burden.

I looked at one house in Clermont Florida. According to the Property Tax Calculator, the taxes should have been around $2600. Instead, the taxes for this particular property were over $5200! 

How could that be? I did some research and obtained a breakdown of the taxes:

Lake County Bcc General Fund of $1,497

Lake County Mstu Ambulance $137

School Board State $1,146

School Board Local $885

City of Clermont $1,241

St Johns River FL Water Management $71

Lake County Debt Services $32

Lake County Water Authority $105

South Lake Hospital District $174

And then... don't forget the $732 HOA fees, which are kinda like a property tax, bring you to $6,000/year

And BAM! You are paying 2% of your home value every year in taxes. That is cheaper than what I pay in New York... but not free. And not anywhere near what the Property Tax Calculator came up with.

The tax rate is more than a third cheaper than New York, however, the home value will be about a third more expensive! While I will save some money, it won't be a life changing amount of money. 

T-Minus 283 Days: A New Home Requirement

 Most Florida houses sit on .25 acres. They pack the houses into subdivisions with about enough room between the houses to allow you to open your window and almost touch your neighbor's house.

My wife has realized that we have a large dog, a Labrador. Unless we want to take the dog for a walk three times per day, we need a yard. The other day, she said to me "You have to tell the real estate agent that we want half an acre so the dog can be outside. And it needs to be fenced in."

Half an acre? We have half an acre for our New York home. It is nice, but, half an acre in a Florida subdivision is not a common thing. The requirement is going to severely cut our options. And a lot size that large could add $10K or more to the house! What is the dog going to do to earn $10K to pay for all this extra yard? I can't charge the dog rent.

Half an acrea.... Oh my God. 

T-Minus 288 Days: Housing for In Laws

 Our house has an inlaw apartment with.... inlaws, of course. And they don't want to move to Florida. Therefore, as part of our move to Florida we need to find them some place to live. They asked if we could simply sell the house with an inlaw apartment that comes with inlaws already populating the apartment and the answer was "no". People buy a house with an inlaw apartment because they have inlaws they need to take care of, not because they want to take care of someone else's inlaws!

Our plan is to get the inlaws settled in their new home in February. Put the house on the market in April. And be gone in June. We can't replace carpets and do repairs while we moving them, so, they need to be all settled. In addition, we don't know how the house selling will go. We might have to rent an apartment for a while if there is a gap between selling the old house and moving into the Florida house. It is all going to just work out better to have them happily settled in their new home away from the chaos of us trying to move.

My wife and I have been researching various options, but the inlaws have only recently became interested in the topic. I think they were hoping the move wouldn't happen and they would be able to stay.

This past weekend we went over their finances, discussed options, and made a plan. Then we traveled several hours to tour a 55+ apartment they might be interested in. The tour lasted two hours as the office manager tried to pressure us into moving in five months early - not happening! 

We will continue to look at other facilities in the coming weeks. Most of the facilities have long wait lists so we want to find something and get our name on a list by November.

There is a lot to think about: moving closer to family means they need to find new doctors. They like their doctors. And they like the area we live in. But staying in this area will be expensive and too far away from family. There is one family member 30 minutes away, but, he can't do it all. That means some difficult decisions will need to be made.

T-Minus 294 Days: The Size House We Want

We are now under 300 days! The progress of saving for our move is coming along nicely because we sold several large items (including the old mini-van!)

When the real estate agent asked us "are there any show stoppers or must-haves for the new house?" and I said "No! We just want to get to Florida". But then we thought about it and.... there are a lot of show stoppers. In fact, we already have an idea in our mind for what this new house needs to be. As we search and search for this idea - it is very rare that we ever find exactly what we are looking for.

One thing that boggles my mind is how a 2700 sqft house in Florida looks tiny compared to our house. The picture shown above is our approx 1800sqft basement which is mostly finished. It is that large because we have an in-law apartment attached to our house. 

You can see the inlaw apartment sitting behind the garage in the picture above. If you remove the inlaw addition and the basement under it, our house is around 2700 sqft

I do A LOT with 2700 sqft. We have a huge living room, a giant toy room, four bedrooms, an office, a gym, and a large dinning room. I look at some of these 2700sqft Florida homes and I don't see how a dinning table would fit in the dinning room, much less add a dinning room hutch!  And the bedrooms? The real estate pictures all show tiny beds to make you think the room is large.

For what ever reason, 2700sqft in Florida doesn't seem to get you as much house. In fact, the only houses we have seen where we feel comfortable about the square footage are houses at 3000+ sqft. Houses run $110-$130/sqft, so, you can do the math. And then add a $60K pool?

We spent all day Sunday searching through houses (similar to what we did at the cabin in the woods). When we were in the woods my wife took the approach of "Could I find a house if I needed one today". On Sunday, I took that approach. It was really disappointing. Most of the houses that had what we wanted were out of our price range, and the houses in our price range weren't what we wanted. 

The killer is the pool - so many Florida houses don't have a pool. Adding a pool after-the-fact is challenging and expensive (ripping up the irrigation system, getting neighbor permission to get construction vehicles down between the houses, etc). 

The search continues....