California costs too much! Let's compare it to Texas [View all]

[Diablo del sol]

My youngest daughter has a burr up her butt to buy a place. Not the best time, trying to get her to hold off a bit as she is young, single, and may have other job opportunities that require a move. She is looking in North San Diego County, and things aren't cheap. The cost and her impatience are driving her to look elsewhere. One city she keeps exploring is Dallas. She found a house in Dallas, comparable to a town home in SD County she is interested in. 600k house in Dallas, comparable to 700k townhouse in CA.

Now she will need me to help with down payment along with mortgage, basically 50/50 partners, she also knows there is no way I will invest one damn cent in TX. So quickly compared the numbers for her. The Texas house is 100k cheaper, but yearly taxes are higher and utility bills will be higher. As the Orange turd and repubs put a cap on SALT deductions she would immediately hit the cap with mortgage/property taxes and likely have about 15k a year that is NOT deductible. (same in CA, but the number is a bit lower)

Utilities would be more in TX. In CA new builds require solar so she would have a 10k investment in solar upfront. (possible to roll it into mortgage) and have much lower utility payments per year. Guessing around 2k per year.

Then I hit her with a real life comparison, the cost/return on my house in SoCal compared the cost of our good friends house in Dallas suburbs. Both houses were bought in 1998. My house was 50 to 75k more. Housing size, mine a bit bigger, maybe 100 to 200 sq ft. Lot size, basically the same. With the extra cost of property tax and utilities, our good friends likely paid slightly more per year.

But here is the big difference. My house has appreciated over $1,000,000 more over the time frame as compared to our friends in TX. That is over 40k per year! Almost $3,500 per month of opportunity costs to have the privilege (misfortune) to live in Texas.

I am all good with people living where they want, my good friend became a RW tRump lover, started out middle of the road, but 35 years in Texas changed him. The point is, and the point I was making to my daughter, they paid (more correctly cost themselves) a whole lot of money by living in the "better run," "less expensive," Texas. Both descriptions are laughable.

Now to stop her from claiming things may change, I ended with this quote. “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell” ― General Philip Henry Sheridan

That was a quote from the 1860's - nothing has changed. And the CA economy is going to implode B.S., been hearing it for almost 50 years. Over that time frame, the CA GDP continued to rise, rose to the point that currently we would be a G7 Country if we were a Country. Fifty years ago, I believe we would have just cracked the top 20.

Texas is the poster child for Low cost of entry (barriers to entry) Easy to get into, but the profit margins are low.