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I appreciate the feedback everyone! I spoke with some realtors/ mortgage lenders today and renting before moving in isn't an option for us at all. It wouldn't work the way we want it to. We wouldn't be closing if we bought until April or May of next year.
Our all in max right now is $110k.( I know that is low for NH prices, but i've found quite a few gems toward the north that are well under our budget with low property taxes. We are low-balling on purpose.) We aren't afraid to be far from things as we plan to spend most of our time at our new home anyway. I used to drive an hour+ to work in the snow in NY, I don't mind doing it again. We like rural, but aren't opposed to being in a small town. We have also looked at the average pricing for utilities and fuel so we know what to expect. I will also add we aren't looking for fancy or expecting the moon and starts with our budget. We like old, plain, and original but functioning/livable. We aren't fans of anything updated period.
We moved to a city (Charleston) we've never been to before without researching the town/community aspects and we are totally happy with the area. We moved where rent was cheapest. The community isn't that big of a deal to us. We make do with what we have where we are. It only matters really when it comes to zoning and tax rates...crime too, but that seems to be very minimal in NH everywhere. We are leaving mainly due to the poor employment opportunities and thousands of people flooding a very small area. And the fact the AC is on in November... I will never get used to that! We are yearning for the four seasons again.
We had the opportunity to see Goffstown, Manchester, and Nashua while in NH a few weeks ago. All awesome! We are really looking for something outside of all of that to be within our budget. We scoped out our main grocery stores we've been researching. LOVE The Fresh Market!
This will not be our forever home. We'd like to fix as we can along the way for a few years and sell. (depending on the market of course...) Right now, living where we can afford it is the most important. Renting is an absolute last resort option. We have pets and renting is outrageous everywhere these days. My husband works from home and we need at least two bedrooms for that. Finding something that doesn't require a security deposit (our apartment down here didn't because of good credit), no non-refundable pet fees, and at least 1,000 sqft for $1,000/mo is near impossible in NH from what i've been seeing. I could be missing places...but i've been looking for almost a year now and had no luck.
Any cheap rental suggestions as a back up? Or nice towns I should look at away from the bigger cities? (NW corner of Merrimack County, Belknap County, and southern parts of Grafton County.)
Regarding Grafton County, Dartmouth College in Hanover and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon are the two largest employers in the area, and that has driven up home prices anywhere close to them. I would start looking at least 15-20 miles away from Hanover/Lebanon to find anything in your price range other than a mobile home. There are a lot of nice, primarily rural towns up here. Make sure you ask about utilities....there are a lot of areas with no high-speed internet or cell phone service.
I would start looking at least 15-20 miles away from Hanover/Lebanon to find anything in your price range other than a mobile home. There are a lot of nice, primarily rural towns up here. Make sure you ask about utilities....there are a lot of areas with no high-speed internet or cell phone service.
In this area there are towns such as Orange, New Hampshire - that people have never heard of or been there.
As it is all rural with zero stores. Quite isolated.
I'm curious to know why you think the taxes will be lower in NH? Granted, NH has no income or sales tax, but have you looked at the property tax rates? They are considerably higher than in SC.
Not to mention higher electric and heating costs in NH as well, particularly if you buy an older house and fix it up. Higher gas prices in NH Higher insurance costs (home and auto).Then there's trash collection, which many small towns don't have (town dumps are local meeting spots on a weekly basis). You can either pay someone to collect it or go to the dump. You mentioned having A/C on in November in SC - how about having the heat on in NH in May, June (on cold rainy days), September, October?? Snow on Halloween?? Not every year but enough to remember.
You might want to do more research on the state before jumping into this move. And I would recommend spending a lot more time up there prior to making any decisions. Having moved from NH to SC a year ago, I can tell you I'm seeing considerably lower costs down here on everything except groceries.
Also forgot to mention vehicle costs. In SC, there are no car inspection costs (annual in NH), car registration in every 2 years (NH is every year), driver's licenses in SC are 10 years (NH is five).
What towns are you looking at? You should be aware that the Free-Staters are located in only a few communities (Keene area, Grafton, ???) and are absent or unwelcome in others. This movement has been driven largely by immigrants from other states and not necessarily by NH residents and communities. Likewise, there is no single "New England way of life." Life varies considerably by state, county, and community.
Agree with this
Free Staters aren't what NH is really about and you are obviously VERY misinformed about what they really are. Having personally dealt with them and lived in a town they "controlled" I can tell you they are nothing but tons and tons of trouble. Their entire purpose seems to be to ruin communities and cause mayhem/trouble. All they did in Keene was vandalize buildings, walk topless (women) in front of children, smoke pot near the elementary school or in the public square, harass cops and their families (including posting where they lived, where their children went to school, and where their spouses worked) online and encouraging people to harass them. They at one point would stand outside police officers homes with bull horns shouting and protesting them for even taking a drunk driver off the streets.
Their sole purpose is to break the law and get arrested then film the "police brutality" of being cuffed and illegally detained. They got my husband seriously injured when he was arresting a man for brutally fighting another man at a bar. They had the cameras and lights directly in the officers faces and my husbands partner, blinded by the lights, hit my husband badly in the leg with his night stick. Most communities want nothing to do with the Free Staters. I hope you're looking forward to a very lengthy rap sheet cause thats what most of them aspire to.
I personally think you're moving there for all the wrong reasons. Have you looked at taxes, pay etc? You say commute isn't an issue yet you are living in SC and must realize winters in NH are very long and very harsh most years. A lot of it is also very remote.
You sound very young and misinformed. Going on vacation someplace and living some place are two VERY different things. Anyone on this board will tell you I made the very mistake you are many years ago. I saw Keene NH on an HGTV Halloween special for the pumpkin festival. We were up there within 6 months looking around and all I saw was quaint NE town in the mountains. We moved up and within 6 months after that in June..By December I was dying to get out. I did no research about taxes, pay, inspections, heating, homes etc. Biggest mistake of our lives for a good while. If you think vacationing somewhere and living somewhere are the same you are sorely mistaken. You are not New Englanders and if you expect to just wander into some remote town filled with people who have lived there generations and be accepted then you are very well mistaken. You are flatlanders and NH is tightly knit. Good luck finding jobs without connections in those types of places. They hire friends and family. You're budget is absurdly low for that state. You say "gems" and you must mean old "charming" homes built in the early 1900's with no A/C no upgrades, lead paint and tons of problems. On being that it probably loses all its heat in winter. As a comparison in florida I pay around $70 in the summer for A/C on full blast for a 2 bedroom 1200sqft condo. Up there in winter I paid around $400+ just for heat for a 1 bedroom apt that was tiny... electric was over $200 on top of that.
I see a lot of younger me in you and it made me very bitter towards the state for a very long time because I had just hopes, all because of a vacation I took there. Don't be a fool.
Last edited by Sweetbottoms; 11-05-2016 at 09:15 AM..
Small world! What part of SC did you move to? That makes a huge difference. We are on the coast.
I know NH has high property tax, but SC almost becomes more expensive when you include the flood insurance that is required on top of everything else. Some home owners i've talked to here live in very modestly sized homes and pay almost 3k a year in flood insurance! They don't live on water either...it is insane.
Owning a vehicle in SC is more expensive than NY from what i've noticed! (The property tax on cars here is a joke with the way their roads look..not sure where that money goes..) We are used to the vehicle registration, inspections , and drivers licenses coming from NYS..
From all of the research i've been doing, NH is a lower tax burden state than any state I have lived in thus far. Charleston has become a much more expensive place to be the longer we are here with how low the pay is and how few jobs there are. In NH, being able to keep more of my income and keep some of my money on almost every purchase makes it much easier to save and allocate where I want to spend/budget. We've definitely looked at the property tax rates all over and have narrowed down a few counties where they are considerably lower. (Lower than NY) We'd get WAY more house in NH than we would in Charleston, by hundreds of square feet, for cheaper!
I grew up in the cold, i'm used to it and want it back. We've had the heat on in the Spring before in NY and i've played soccer in a freak October blizzard, so i'm used to extreme weather. Heating is cheaper in NH than SC! Propane here is more than oil in NH. Heating and cooling would be cheaper overall due to not really needing AC in NH during the summer. In Charleston, you NEED air conditioning to function as early as late April. Our utility bills average $150-$200 in a 980 sqft apartment with the air set at 75 and minimal electric usage from May- September. I grew up with no AC my entire life in western NY.. it wouldn't be a requirement for us in NH. So it eliminates an entire bill for us. We also had to take our trash to the dump when I was little, so i'm used to that too.
We've been prepping for this move for about year. Reading forums, talking to natives, visiting, watching videos, watching real estate, job markets, regional events, etc... It is by far the most ideal place for us at our age with what we want to do with our lives. We learned more about NH when we got to SC in late 2014. If we considered it earlier, we would've never moved down here.
Where did you move from in NH? We just stayed in Goffstown- such a nice town!
Heating and cooling would be cheaper overall due to not really needing AC in NH during the summer. !
I'm not sure who told you that but that's as far from the truth as it can get. I lived in SWFL before I moved to NH. I'm talking triple digit heat indexes with 100% humidity for 8 months. NH summer was way more brutal. Heat indexes were in the 100's some days and the haze/humidty was unreal. The first week we moved there our apt didn't have A/C and I remember laying on my kitchen tile floor pressing my cheek to the cold tile. Nights were muggy and miserable without it and days were so unbearable we would drive in our car for hours just to stay in the A/C . You will very much need A/C in NH for the summer unless you like overheating. You hear of people dying every summer up north because they don't have A/C in their homes but rarely in the south where it is standard. Do no be fooled thinking it is cooler up north in the summer. Very very far from it.
I'm not sure who told you that but that's as far from the truth as it can get. I lived in SWFL before I moved to NH. I'm talking triple digit heat indexes with 100% humidity for 8 months. NH summer was way more brutal. Heat indexes were in the 100's some days and the haze/humidty was unreal. The first week we moved there our apt didn't have A/C and I remember laying on my kitchen tile floor pressing my cheek to the cold tile. Nights were muggy and miserable without it and days were so unbearable we would drive in our car for hours just to stay in the A/C . You will very much need A/C in NH for the summer unless you like overheating. You hear of people dying every summer up north because they don't have A/C in their homes but rarely in the south where it is standard. Do no be fooled thinking it is cooler up north in the summer. Very very far from it.
I grew up in Rochester, NY with no AC for 24 years. We know we don't need it.
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