Okay, so you are thinking about mood or breakspear texts. You're probably ask yourself how much does it even cost there? Well, in today's video we're talking about the five unexpected costs that you're going to have if you're thinking about moving this way. Okay. So cost number one is property taxes. If you're moving or Fredricksburg or just Texas in general from another state, one thing you'll quickly realize that are property taxes are quite a bit higher than a lot of states. According to tech shark.com, a 2022 study on property taxes by WalletHub, an average American single family household has a median value of 217,500, and its residents spend about $2,471 on property taxes each year. In comparison, an equivalent average household in Texas would pay about $3,907, or over 58% more. So on the other hand, here Texas, we don't have state income tax. So the two kind of ended up bouncing each other out. And since we do not have state income tax to help pay for our public school expenses, school districts use local property tax revenue to cover as much as their base budgets as possible. Then the state chips in the rest. So here in Texas you get a tax rate. And the best way to figure out what the rate is for Fredricksburg is by going to Google. Typing in Gillespie County Appraisal district. Click on the information tab towards the top. Scroll down. Click on tax Rates 2022 tax rates. And then after that PDF opens, you can scroll down the page and it will show you a breakdown for County city of Fredericksburg, city dos and harbors. As you'll probably notice, you actually pay a lower tax rate. They're located out in county and not within the city limits. So if you are shopping around for a new home and depending on what that sales prices, they may be a good idea for you to find something outside of the city limits out the county. Because you could save a little bit of money each year on those property taxes. But if you like the convenience of being inside the city limits in town, all the restaurants are closed. H-e-b, Walmart, what have you. You know, it may not even matter to you that you save a few thousand dollars depending on that sales price again each year on this property taxes, by being out in the county. Here in Texas, we also have exemptions, tax exemptions, which helps bring down the amount of taxes you're paying back to the county each year, such as homestead exemption. If the house is going to be your primary residence, you can get a tax reduction based on the fact that this is your homestead and you would not get this exemption. If this is going to be an investment property such as an Airbnb. You also have 65 and up, 65 and older, which freezes your taxes, which basically means they will not continue to go up over the years, which is a huge plus. You also have the disability tax exemptions depending on what your disability rating is, you have to be at least 50% or up. Will really depend on how much you're going to get a reduction. But here in Texas, if you are 100% disabled with the VA, you actually do not pay anything on property taxes. And then you have ag exemption and wildlife exemptions. Basically, you have to I'm not going to go to great detail with that one, but you have to have at least six acres, one acre for your homestead, your house within five acres for your land. Basically, that brings down the amount of taxes you're paying on the land itself. Okay, so cost number two. But before we get started, I want to hear from you in the comments. What are some of the unexpected costs that you've had while living here? Right. Expert okay. So cost number two is the median home sales price. Okay. So we just wrapped up 2022. We officially have the median home sales price for the entire year from our board of Realtors. So I want to cover that for Gillespie County. But we also have the median sales price for the city limits are Fredericksburg. So we're going to cover those two and then compare that to other areas. So Gillespie County finished the year with a median sales price of 599,999, which was a 14.3% increase from 2021. Now, this does include the entire county, so Fredericksburg, Harper, Dallas and Stonewall. The city limits of Fredericksburg wrapped up the year with a median sales price of 558,500. Now, according to how many Vox.com a tax migration website, we have a large population of people moving from Harris County, which is the Houston, Texas area. In fact, over these past five years, I've helped out a lot of people moved from that Houston area over to Fredricksburg and Kerrville. And for the most part, they all moved over here for the same reasons. You know, they all love the sceneries. They love to go up the river, they love the personalized river. You know, they love that small town feel just in of themselves some really good Texas wine. Which if you haven't watched my video about the top ten wineries here in Fredricksburg, click the link above. Okay, so back to the median sales price. So since we're talking about Houston, let's go ahead and look at their numbers and compare to Fredricksburg and see what the big differences are between the two areas. Houston's median sales price for the year was 335,000. So that makes Fredericksburg median price 223,500. More than Houston's. And what does that look like on a monthly mortgage basis? Well, let's go ahead and hop over to nerdwallet.com to see a $558,000 house with 5% down would cost you around $4,100 a month in Fredericksburg. Now a $335,000 house in Houston with 5% down would cost you right around $2,800 a month. So, as you can tell, there's a significant difference between the two areas. But one thing I must add that is for the overall Houston area, if you look at areas like Katy or Sugarland, which are suburbs of Houston, their median sales price is actually quite a bit higher than the overall Houston area. In fact, the southern area of Sugarland has a median sales price that is $106,000 more than the median sales price of Christchurch, sitting at $665,000. Okay, so let's go ahead and move to cost number three, which is electricity and utility bills. So I asked a local Facebook group here in Fredericksburg what people are paying for their monthly electricity and utility bills. And I end up getting quite a few different answers back. On average, the people coming were paying right around $100 per month for electricity. But for those who commented that have pools or hot tubs, they were paying closer to around $200 a month. So your overall electric bill ultimately depends on your usage. Obviously, you know how many people you have in the house using electricity, you know how many things you are powering, such as these calls and hot tubs, etc. but honestly, I think some of the easiest ways to save on your power bills electricity bills is just to shut off the lights whenever you're not using them. My dad always preaches to us when we were kids. If you're not using light, turn it off. So I think, honestly, if you're trying to save some money on your electric bill, just turn off your lights if you're not using them. For me, I have a 1900 square foot house. It's just my wife and I are 14 month old son, and we don't have any hot tubs or pools or anything, but we pay right around $100 per month for our electricity bill. Tends to be a little bit lower during the summer, believe it or not. And during those winter months it tends to go up working on the heater. I guess it just takes more energy to use a heater than it has to run your AC unit. According to Electric City local.com, the average electricity rate in Fredericksburg is 17.7%, less the Texas average rate and 23.99% less than the national average rate. The City of Rexburg website states that the monthly cost per kilowatt is $0.07, which again is almost 18% less than the rest of the state of Texas. One thing you'll need to realize, though, if you're coming from a state like California or any other state that has beautiful, you know, unicorns, 65 degree weather all year, it's going to be a quite a bit of adjustment for you, seeing how hot our summers get and how cold our winters gets if their winters aren't that cold. But if we have a week long cold front, you better believe you're going to be pumping that heater quite a bit. Drive up that electricity bill for that week. So when determining your cost of living here, Fredricksburg, this is definitely something you'll need to factor in along with your monthly mortgage payment. Okay. So let's go ahead and move on to cost number four, which is our rental rates okay. So if you're thinking about moving or Frankfurt, but maybe you're not in a position to buy a home yet, either working on your credit score or try to save up for your down payment. Or maybe you're just trying to fill out the area first. Well, in that case, you'll definitely need to know what our rental rates are going for. Okay, so the last six months we've had 28 houses that have rented, at least on our multiple listing service, with an average rental rate of just over $2,500 a month. Now, we can compare that to what the median sales price is and what you'd be paying on your monthly mortgage. It's actually about $1,500 less than what you'd be paying on that mortgage. Now, again, we are talking about that median home sales price range, which is fairly high. We currently have 41 houses inside the city limits of Fredericksburg that are listed below, 558,000, again, that median home sales price. So if you're trying to keep your monthly mortgage below $3,000 a month, your best bet is to try to find a house under 400,000 or put more money down if you can. One of the biggest things to keep in mind, though, if you're renting a house, you will literally never get that money back and what you're actually doing is paying for somebody else's mortgage. But like I talked about earlier, if you're not really in a position yet to buy, you need to save up for downpayment. Work on that credit score to test out the area to see if you like it. Well, obviously you're just not in a position yet to buy, but once that time does come, as long as you're you're thinking about this in a long term standpoint, you're not trying to sell the house within six months of buying it. You're going to be building equity over the years, therefore putting more money in your back pocket. You can't go wrong with investing in real estate as long as you have a long term game plan with the house, not a short term plan. Okay, so let's go ahead and move on to cost number five. But before we do that, I want to hear from you down in the comments. What are some of the reasons you have not moved or breaks for years? If the cost of living like we've been talking about real estate taxes, whatever, is it not enough things to do? I want to hear from you down in the comments. Let me know. Okay, so cost number five is groceries. Okay. So for this cost what I did is go to the HBI app and ordered eight weeks worth of groceries for two adults and one toddler. Now this will be exactly the same every week obviously, but hopefully this will give you an idea of what you're looking at for weekly grocery cost here, right? Exclude and also want to add this. If you have not ordered from the HBI app to go for curbside, you are completely missing out because it is super convenient and saves a boatload of time. Definitely check it out. You haven't done it yet. Okay, so quickly scrolling down this list, we have some basic items for breakfast, lunch, and a couple plan dinner meals for the week. Expecting some leftovers. The total amount came out to about $177, which we ultimately budget for right around $200 a week, adding up to around $800 a month for groceries. Now, keep in mind there is a toddler involved here, so this bill would actually probably be a little bit less if it's just for two adults. But I also want to touch on how Fredricksburg ranks against the rest of the state of Texas, but also the United States. So according to the overall scale of 100, which is based on the entire U.S, Fredericksburg sits at 95.7 compared to Texas at 93.7, putting both Fredericksburg and the entire state of Texas below the rest of the United States. Okay, so you're looking at an overall living expense of right around $5,100 a month. If you're planning on buying a home here in town or out in the county, doesn't really matter. But if you're planning on renting, you're looking at right around $3,500 a month. Obviously, this is super rough. You know, it's got to really ultimately depend on your your living circumstances and your lifestyle. But I hope this gives you an idea of what you're looking at for cost of living here in Fredericksburg. If you decide to move this way, and if you are thinking about moving here to Fredericksburg, make sure you click on my relocation guide down below. Hey guys, really appreciate you watching the video today. Make sure you like this video! Subscribe to the channel and also hit that bell so you can get notified anytime I put out videos just like this one. We'll see you guys next time.
