What are your housing expenses?

[Thedrin]

I-don't-know-how-many-square feet apartment in Midtown East, New York. A couple of days ago I saw the bill addressed to the company I work for. The number at the bottom was scary.

 

[Narz]

I-don't-know-how-many-square feet apartment in Midtown East, New York. A couple of days ago I saw the bill addressed to the company I work for. The number at the bottom was scary.

Cool, a fellow NYer.

I pay about 75% of my income to rent. But I have a decent (albeit tiny) place & all to myself for the first time since I started posting on CFC!

Best deal I had (for about a year) was an illegal rent-controlled sublet where I was paying $450 a month for a room of my own (this included internet & electric) in a 2-bedroom apartment in the Union Square area. Only problem was housemate was ****oo for cocoa puffs so eventually I had to get out of there.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Currently $0, was paying $2,388 per month mortgage for a renovated 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 2 toilet, 1 LUG brick townhouse. Plus rates, water service and levies on top of that.
Had parent help with deposit amount too which helped a lot. Scrapped every spare cent into the mortgage back then, worked extra hours and did everything I could to save money.

 

[madviking]

$420 out of $1200 for a 3 bed/2 bath

 

[Arwon]

My partner and I rent for about 19% of our combined annual income (depending on how much leave at half pay I take, and what shifts she picks up in the future).

 

[thecrazyscot]

$2,500/month for a 2BR 2 Bath apartment. San Francisco. Rent controlled. Big place sunny place (for the city anyways) with a nice view about a mile and a half from Ocean Beach. This is waaay under market though, especially for this particular square footage. Big enough for two kids; my wife and I joke that we will be leaving this place feet first. (Morbid Social worker joke for in a coroner's body bag).

Our prior tiny 1 bedroom was $1,600/month when we rented it in 2010-ish; when we left asking price in our building for the same tiny little 1BR apartment was over $3,500. Our kid's first "bedroom" in that place was... a closet. There was a Facebook and Google bus stop nearby and Target moved into an old abandoned shopping center which made rent prices go bananas. The San Francisco rental and housing market is beyond crazy.

For some reason that makes me think of Hotel Impossible episode my wife and I were watching where the penthouse suite in a particular hotel went for $15,000 a night.

I pay about 75% of my income to rent. But I have a decent (albeit tiny) place & all to myself for the first time since I started posting on CFC!

Just out of curiosity as I know zilch about your situation, is that high of a percentage sustainable for you?

 

[warpus]

75% is close to what my parents were paying for our apartment in communist Poland. And basically it was just barely sustainable. Granted, we didn't have any money for luxuries or sometimes even food, but that's okay, the stores were empty anyway.

So yeah, 75% seems crazy to me.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

My house payment is $550 a month for a 1500 square foot 3 bed 1.5 bath place. I live with two other people, one who rents one of the bedrooms for $350 a month, effectively making the house payment $200 a month. It has a huge yard and a huge kitchen. Small/mid-sized Midwest cities have their perks, too bad they're boring.

 

[warpus]

And the fast food joints are staffed by people with a lack of understanding of manners.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

It's weird because the Midwest has a reputation of nice people, I don't really know or make judgments on a region's politeness, but I will say I had several examples of rudeness in New York City, more than any other city I've been too. I also met someone once in Darwin, Australia, who thumbed their nose at me because I was a tourist, so small sample sizes and all, most people in Aussieland were nice.

I'll put up with rudeness though if it means I can live for cheap.

 

[warpus]

Here in my town you'll always get a "thank you", "you're welcome", and so on, even at the greasiest & cheapest fast food joint you can find. Plus everything is super cheap... well.. for Canadian standards anyway. It's the reason I bought a house here, the housing market is dirt cheap, the metro area of the city is almost half a million, so there's a lot of big-town amenities, it's Canada so people are generally polite (except for drivers, they can suck it), and a lot of worthwhile stuff is under 2-3 hours away (U.S. border - Buffalo, Detroit, Port Huron, Toronto, several great lakes, Niagara Falls, lots of parks). There are downsides to living here, but I think I would hate to live in a large town like Toronto for too long. Too expensive and noisy. Then again I'd probably get used to it, I guess, just not the prices..

 

[thecrazyscot]

Living in the American South for the most part is also a very friendly experience. I've found that there are very differing regional opinions on courtesy. To paint it in the broadest terms from my own experience, southerners value friendliness while northerners value efficiency.

Personally, I don't view them as mutually exclusive, which a lot of people seem to do.

 

[The_J]

Let me guess, you live in either Delft, Groningen or Wageningen?

In Germany I'd have said "impressive", but after looking at the numbers, I'd say for the Netherlands you can gamble with that ^^ (100+ universities + 200+ universities of applied science vs. 13 universities + 30+ universities of applied science; just randomly you had nearly a 25% chance ^^).

$2,500/month for a 2BR 2 Bath apartment.

That is...insane.

 

[downtown]

We spend $1,350 on a terrible one bedroom apartment near Washington DC, and will probably move to a slightly less terrible $1,600ish small two bedroom. I hate living here.

 

[warpus]

Interesting somewhat related map (of Canada)

Spoiler :

 

[Steph]

When I lived in Toulouse, I paid a rent of rouhgly 500 € / month for an appartment, 70m², 2 bedrooms.
Then I moved to Mazamet (one hour from Toulouse), and the rent was 500 € / month, for an appartment, 160 m², 4 bedrooms, two bathrooms.

And a few years ago, I had an house built. The cost was a little less than 190 k€, including the land (1200 m², the house, 4 bedrooms + large "piano - computers room", 140m² + garage / laundry room which are not counted since they are basement area).

I pay a little more than 1000 € / month to repay the loan. That's rouhgly 20% of combined income

But my place is cheap. It's a lot more in Toulouse. And a LOT more in Paris.

 

[Verbose]

Home-owner in a fast-growing university town in central Sweden, close to Stockholm. (House prices bang on the national average — with the three big cities above of the average, and the rest of the country below — Stockholm runaway expensive now.)

4-room (2 bedrooms) + 1,5 bathroom + kitchen, timber frame house built in 1915, 120 sq m. Bought it 9 years ago (prices lower then by about 60%.) Pay about 300 USD/month for my mortgage — interests rates currently at an historical low (the Swedish National Bank currently runs a negative interest rate). Heating and electricity costs about the same. Mortgage takes not quite 10% of my disposable income (5% of our combined income).

 

[warpus]

Negative interest rate?? Holy crap.. Why would they do that? Is the economy in such a dire shape? (I'm no economist, but generally over here when the economy goes to crap, the interest rates drop. I've never seen them go into the negative though.)

 

[thecrazyscot]

I was very confused as well, had to look it up to see why they would do that.

Article.

A deposit rate below zero effectively punishes banks that hoard cash at the central bank instead of extending loans to businesses or to weaker lenders. Policy makers are trying to prevent a slide into deflation, or a spiral of falling prices that could derail the recovery. That’s also the goal in Sweden, which is using a similar combination of negative rates and bond-buying. Denmark pushed rates deeper into negative territory to make its currency less attractive to hold and protect its peg to the euro.

...

Negative interest rates are a sign of desperation, a signal that traditional policy options have proved ineffective and new limits need to be explored. Rates below zero have been used by a handful of smaller central banks in recent years, though never in an economy as large as the euro area.

...

In theory, interest rates below zero should reduce borrowing costs for companies and households, driving demand for loans. In practice, there’s a risk that the policy might do more harm than good.

 

[Joecoolyo]

315 out of about 1200 or so. It pays for a crappy apartment with 3 crappy roommates.

Next year bump those numbers up 100, subtract the crap, and its what I have.

(I have high expectations for next year)