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I agree, suburban living was boring and we hated driving everywhere. In my mind, it comes down to this:
Is it worth sacrificing our current lifestyle in the city (convenience to food, gym, restaurants, friends, activities, parks) for a life in the suburbs where we would gain around $6k/year that could go towards starting a family?
That's what you have to decide. I actually am saving 3K a year even with city wage taxes because my real estate takes went from 1100 a month to under 6 a month. everyone's mileage will differ.
I'm not a big fan of comparing amenities because there just isn't any real good comparison tool.
Montgomery county has about 750 thousand residents (and that's including all of the towns). Philadelphia is twice as large at about 1.6 million. of course there will be issues with services.
Montgomery county is one of the wealthiest in the state, they don't have to have issues with dealing with poverty that Philly does.
You simply cannot compare the two.
Now if you want to move simply based on cost of living, the north east region is pretty much has one of the highest col's in the nation.
lastly, will that be a true 6K in savings, people move and then realize other cost begin to go up. just some random things my dh and I ran into when we moved out of philly.
1) cost of transportation. gas and wear and tear on the ride.
2) cost of insurance. yes NJ has some of the highest car insurance and home insurance in the country. my car insurance went down almost 15% when we moved back to Philly.
3) cost of home maintenance . Now I live in a townhome in fairmont so again it's not the same as when I lived in surburbia but I no longer have lawn care cost, my heating bills went down. that could be though that my kids were in college when we moved.
now we left philly for one reason, the school system but I do think as far as all the other things you mentioned (roads, trash, services) do not assume because you are in a nice burb they will be better. they often are not.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BK_PHL_DEL
I couldn't find a previous thread on a discussion about just taxes, so I am starting one now. The 2019 assessments are now posted on the Phila.gov website and my local Fishtown facebook group has 400+ comments about it in one thread. Pretty much everyone's valuations have gone up, with seemingly no consistency. Is it a straight cash grab by the city?
We are in year 2 of our abatement. Without the abatement, our RE tax would be $6,270 (millage rate of 14 mils, or 1.4%). This is with our assessed value being our purchase price of the house, which I am not sure is the correct value to use for the assessment. Add wage tax of around $7,000 and our total taxes to the City of Philadelphia is $13,270!
And, for what? No street cleaning, garbage men sloppily dumping our trash onto streets, no enforcement of parking/unsafe sidewalks, billions in uncollected backtaxes, with a mayor who has the audacity to raise taxes on us, the taxpayers before going after the backtaxes first, etc.
I am starting to think that moving to the suburbs will be the better move, especially financially. There are some listings in the neighborhood of $450k for a 3bed/2bath in Paoli/Malvern/West Chester for example whose 2018 RE taxes were $5,000 or just under. Assuming the township has a 1% wage tax or EIT, that would be just $1,800 for a total tax of $6,800 or so! How can the taxes in the suburbs be so much less than Philly when those tax dollars go SO much further in the suburbs? Am I missing something here?
You have to work the numbers. It varies.
Everyone who works in Philadelphia pays the wage tax. If you live in a suburb you pay the non resident rate.
I worked in Lower Merion for several years. There is a wage tax, but nothing like Philadelphia's. I have no clue how it works for residents. South Jersey has higher millage rates, but what your tax is varies by municipality. Usually real estate is cheaper in South Jersey. In South Jersey you deduct the city wage tax from your state income tax.
There isn't a definitive answer. It depends on the individual & that person's circumstances.
Usually, when you buy a house that's the value for assessments on the theory that that's what it's worth to you.
Without talking specifics, if your number one priority in choosing a place to live is value, Philadelphia will never make sense for you. Further Philadelphia will never "out suburb" the suburbs so if you place a high value on things that are plentiful in the suburbs (parking, back yards, etc), Philadelphia will never make sense for you.
That being said, talking about increasing the property tax rate while floating out a city wide reassessment that increases the total value of property by over 10% is tone deaf, incompetent, corrupt, or all three.
I agree with you but others see it very differently. From a financial stand-point, it is cheaper to live in the suburbs. Everything in the city comes at a premium but it seems oblivious to some. They will come here huffing and puffing how it is cheaper to live in the city, while they are getting less for their moneys worth.
If anyone wants to live in the city, that's fine. Just don't try to come up with your own version of alternative facts
Quote:
Originally Posted by PHL10
Without talking specifics, if your number one priority in choosing a place to live is value, Philadelphia will never make sense for you. Further Philadelphia will never "out suburb" the suburbs so if you place a high value on things that are plentiful in the suburbs (parking, back yards, etc), Philadelphia will never make sense for you.
That being said, talking about increasing the property tax rate while floating out a city wide reassessment that increases the total value of property by over 10% is tone deaf, incompetent, corrupt, or all three.
If anyone wants to live in the city, that's fine. Just don't try to come up with your own version of alternative facts
What's the matter with the Philadephia library system? I don't have any great affinity for Philadelphia, but I think the library system is pretty great. I use it constantly. My only complaint would be that two of my local branches were recently closed for renovations - back up and running now though. They have just about everything we've ever wanted to read, and you can place a hold and have it available at your local library in a week or two.
We would have probably moved out of the city years ago if we thought we could save money by doing so. I don't know how you can say flat-out that it's cheaper to live in the suburbs.
That's like saying it is cheaper to live in Kensington than to live in Radnor. Duh!
Just because you are paying less, does not mean you are getting the same value. That is what I mean when I say everything in the city costs more. Cities have a higher cost of living, how hard is it to get this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by FamousBlueRaincoat
We would have probably moved out of the city years ago if we thought we could save money by doing so. I don't know how you can say flat-out that it's cheaper to live in the suburbs.
That's like saying it is cheaper to live in Kensington than to live in Radnor. Duh!
Just because you are paying less, does not mean you are getting the same value. That is what I mean when I say everything in the city costs more. Cities have a higher cost of living, how hard is it to get this?
We live in Mt Airy and own zero cars. What's a place that would have been a better value?
We're about a year away from completely leaving the metro area - actually living in a big metropolitan area (city or suburbs) is a big waste of money to us and a part of why we're leaving.
I'd have been more than open about 4 years ago when we moved to Mt Airy to leaving the city to save money. I think it might have been cheaper to live in, say, Upper Darby, but I don't think that's what you're getting at.
You're saying we pay less, but it's not a good value, and we have a higher cost of living. If I understand correctly?
I'm being serious - in the off chance something happened and we stayed here, I'd honestly love to get a better value.
That's like saying it is cheaper to live in Kensington than to live in Radnor. Duh!
Just because you are paying less, does not mean you are getting the same value. That is what I mean when I say everything in the city costs more. Cities have a higher cost of living, how hard is it to get this?
The higher cost of living in Philly in particular is due to the damn wage tax. Most suburban munis will have a 1% wage tax vs Philly's 3.89%. So if you move to the suburbs, you've now freed up 2.89% of your salary per year. If your property tax (suburbs) is less than (2.89% of your yearly salary) + (Philly property tax) then you are in the black. If greater, then you are in the red. So my magic number for the property tax (suburbs) to be equal to what I pay in wage tax + property tax in Philly is ~$11k. In other words, the tax I pay in Philly is roughly equivalent to $11k in property taxes in the suburbs. Any non-Philly property less than $11k in RE taxes and I come out plus. If that makes any sense.
I agree above that hiking up the assessments on top of proposing a tax increase is tone deaf (great description!). Taxes will of course go up in the suburbs, but it will be at a much slower pace than that of Philly because as my salary goes up (with inflation/promotions/job change), the higher Philly wage tax will keep taking from it.
You're forgetting an important part of the equation. For those with kids, the property tax bill in the suburbs doubles as your school tuition (if you send your kids to public schools). To guarantee a similar level of education to almost any suburb you would have to pay for private school. Even the most affordable ones will be significantly more than your standard property tax bill.
I disagree with the notion that everything in the city is more expensive though. There is a pretty obvious "Main Line" premium that gets added to just about everything -- restaurants, local stores, services, etc.
I agree with you but others see it very differently. From a financial stand-point, it is cheaper to live in the suburbs. Everything in the city comes at a premium but it seems oblivious to some. They will come here huffing and puffing how it is cheaper to live in the city, while they are getting less for their moneys worth.
If anyone wants to live in the city, that's fine. Just don't try to come up with your own version of alternative facts
exactly what alternative facts did I come up with. Property taxes are pretty easy, every year I get a bill. lol when I lived in South Jersey my last bill was 13,500 dollars. are you saying that there was another version where this number was lower??
I just did my taxes this year, for my fairmont house my property taxes was 5789.00
when I lived in south Jersey my car insurance for the three cars I have on my bill was 4972.00 Now my car insurance is lower and it can have some thing to do with my insurance company does not even sell policies in NJ due to I heard silly regulation but my car insurance dropped 1300.00 lower
lol I can count.
now we left Philadelphia because of the lousy school system. no one here is saying that it's better but we ran out of south jersey because it was overall 20% higher than living in Philadelphia.
I love how people post and then get mad when people don't jump on their band wagon
let's see the rest of your rant.
libraries? I can walk to the free library on JFK blvd. truthfully I can't say if they are better or worst as since laptops I can honestly say I haven't been a library anywhere. so public libraries have no intrinsic value for my family. My son goes to Temple so he's got a top notch library.
trash services? I get recycle and trash every Monday. outside of snow they've been on time. I don't use trash cans so again, they pick up the garbage bags, throw them in the truck. same thing they did in Jersey. Is something special going on else where? they don't seem to be particularly loud or incompetent
so what exactly "valuable" thing am I not getting???? now evidently for the things you value the suburbs will be cheaper and if
idiot mayor screws up everyones property values I will have to reevaluate.
but from 2012 to 2018 including my city wage tax, I have saved on average 6 grand a year and I am close to retirement so I've tracked almost every single penny.
again, I can count.
Last edited by eliza61nyc; 04-09-2018 at 04:05 PM..
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