Totally Freaked About Moving to Raleigh! (Dallas, Turkey: credit, real estate, property taxes)

[miamiblue]

Originally Posted by jfre81

<snip>have a wi-fi laptop and an offbeat, admittedly nerdish interest in urban planning. That said, the Triangle's constant struggle with unbridled growth remains intriguing if anything to me even after having experienced it firsthand.

I do not always bash Raleigh. Go read the thread where I laud the local sports scene that I still miss. In this same thread I shed light on Raleigh's underground music scene since it was a thread about Austin compared with Raleigh.

The OP is moving to Raleigh to get her Ph.D. at NCSU. So this is a legitimate thread, whether it was what people wanted to read this afternoon.

I definitely agree with you on the growth issues. There are plenty of cities that are perfect examples of how wild and frivolous development can go very very wrong (I was born and raised in one), and I really hope that the Triangle starts to pay very close attention to those examples and do what it can to NOT follow the same path. Development is great, only if it benefits the entire community, not just the pockets of developers and their pet government officials. This is something that I hope gets the attention of many residents who are actually happy with the current quality of life here.

I think that many people were taken aback by the OP's glass half empty tone of the post, or at least that is what got me thinking on it. I'm not going to try to defend everyone's responses, but I personally think it would have been more constructive to say, "I visited the area and these are the things I noticed. I wasn't really impressed, but I am planning to attend school at NCSU due to the program I am interested in and would like some suggestions of areas that offer this this and this." Or, like many other people who have posted on the forum, just ask where certain things of interest can be found. If you know you have to live in a certain area due to a job, school, etc. that is unique to that place, you might as well try to get the best from it instead of just saying that it sucks and you hate it. If you start off with that kind of attitude, of course you're not going to make many friends and have a good time with anything you embark on.

It's easy to get on here and be anonymous and just spout out whatever is on one's mind. Sometimes that is not very constructive, which is how I viewed the OP's original post, as well as some of the responses that blindly praise the Triangle. I think these boards are important for conveying information, asking questions, etc., and I am always glad to hear others' points of view, because there will always be positives and negatives of every place. After being born and raised in a place that I truly despise, my mantra has become, make the most of where you are when you are there - sometimes you're the master of your own happiness/misery.

[jfre81]

Thanks.

I never ventured into Charlotte, but from what I hear and read it's geared more toward the young people who aren't necessarily in school. If you're a working dude it's hard to date a college girl. When you go cruising around NC State you might find a girl and you might hit it off but for the time being, NC State University is her boyfriend. She has too much fun with you, her grades go down and come the end of semester it's back to Erie, Pennsylvania with her and that's that unless you want to shovel snow in the Rust Belt. It was great while it lasted. If you're under 30 you need to be in a spot that caters to the under-30 crowd. It seems like if NC is where you want to be and that's what you're looking for, stay far away from the Triangle and check out Charlotte. But beware of exactly what VeeEight pointed out - he touched on an issue that I was rather reluctant to go into, but I back up everything he said as well as everything I've said.

For having three large universities that close together I was underwhelmed by the college social scene that is there. I had this idea coming in that the Triangle was basically the biggest row of frathouses in the country, that there were smoking hot women everywhere and that the whole thing was pretty much what you'd get if you put Austin and College Station right next to each other with Houston's Rice Village thrown in for good measure. Liberal middle-class dudes who smoke weed and play guitar as much as study, having eked their way through community college to finish up their degree, rooming just a few yards away from a couple of rich sexually-repressed Yankee girls from Massachusetts with their own cars who've just fled their Puritan parents to Duke with no-limit MasterCards. In a nutshell, an average-Joe bachelor student's paradise. My expectations were frankly a slightly less fantastical vision of the OP's, to be honest. None of this affected my personal enjoyment since I was coming to NC in the first place to be with the lady I'm going to be with until the Pope relocates the Vatican to Garner, but I remain observant especially having been footloose and carefree just a year or so before that.

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by Waterboy526

Sounds like you were determined to never actually like it here.

Let me put this in perspective...

Texas does not have the road use taxes or vehicle property taxes. Having to pay massive amounts of money out of pocket just to register your vehicle in the state leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, especially when people on places like here never seem to bring it up.

On the other hand, and going the other way, I paid right around $100 registering my vehicle here (my NC inspection is good until it expires due to TX-NC reciprocal laws). Now, I actually bought my car near Garner just before leaving, then had it worked where I was given a temporary license that expired in 30 days, and in that time I needed to drive to Texas and pay sales tax there and not in NC (and thereby dodging the road and property tax). The car actually had a Maryland title so the state of NC got nothing and I saved $1200 on a conservative estimate doing it this way. Sales tax, which was 6% because it was from a certified dealer, on a $8K car. $480 sales tax on a car I bought for $8K. I came out just under $600 total making the car legal in Texas. A car that is completely paid for. I will drop another $100 on inspection and registration a year, but I will never pay another penny just to own my car. All those road taxes and property taxes (especially if you're not driving do a lot to eat up those savings on insurance (liability insurance rates in NC are about half that of Houston's if you have a clean driving record, but that's what you get living in a county with 3.5 million people).

The only thing I really think the people on this subforum distort is the tax situation in NC. You might come up better off in the end with more square footage for less property tax even after having to pay use and property taxes on the Family Truckster and Dad's beater that he drives to work. But for the average person who is not looking to be a homeowner NC can be a downright brutal state when it comes to taxes. Texas and NC are both cheap places to rent for poor cats like myself who toil on the low end of the white-collar food chain, now resigned to a life of serfdom living in a livable spot for my Tar Heel-turned-Texan and I (and she's loving it here), paying a paltry rent that's lower than the guy across the street's property taxes per month, and letting other people fix and pay for maintenance problems. When it comes to paying taxes on everything else, NC is not the place out of the two to be. It's as simple as that, and the reasons are well documented here.

I never actually held a bank account based in NC, but if I'm not mistaken, I think any securities or such that you hold are subject to property tax in addition to capital gains. That is what I gather from a layman's reading of NC's confounding property tax statutes. If I am wrong feel free to correct me on this, but if I'm right...sorry, that dog won't hunt.

[saturnfan]

No tax on intangibles any more, only the interest/dividends they throw off.

I pay about $130/year on my relatively new Corolla, but license fee is only $33/year. Some states charge more per year with no property tax on cars.

We rent and don't feel second class at all. Pool, gym, business center, and 24 hour emergency service in the rent. You should see the three lovely rental office ladies, real eye candy. Makes it fun to stop by with the rent or to shoot the breeze.

Yay Raleigh!

[chemteacher]

My husband and I live in Boston and we love it! BUT we want to have kids and I couldn't imagine having a family in Boston. When my husband had to decide whether to work in Durham or Boston we agonized over the decision and choose Durham. We move next year (July 08) but of course we are second guessing our decision. Your comments about the area being perfect for families is very reassuring. Its hard to make a decision about children that are still a twinkle in my eye.

Originally Posted by bluedevilz

I don't see your posts as bashing......its a good thing to have balance and this board doesn't always have that.

The Triangle isn't right for everyone, but that doesn't make it wrong for those who like it....seems some people take offense too easily if others don't see this area as nirvana.

Personally, I am over 40 with 3 young kids who are very much into soccer and this area is PERFECT for us....

If I were under 30 though, single or married w/o kids I think I would be bored beyond beyond tears......

I never lived more than 15 mins from downtown Boston when I was under 30 and I wouldn't trade my time there for here at the same age...

[jfre81]

I was being more facetious than anything about being "second-class" as renters. I don't buy that and people generally don't buy that here, except there are some who fear that all apartments are magnets for crime just because we have some really low-grade dives on the outskirts of town.

And thanks for clarifying that for me - I had probably pulled up an old version of the code.

[VeeEight]

There was an intangibles tax, but they were forced to abolish it as it was unconstitutional. It seems that North Carolina will try to tax you on anything they can, and will do it right up until the United States Supreme Court tells them to cease and desist. See:
[url=http://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1995/1995_94_1239/ [/url]

Also, they make you pay state sales tax on any purchases you make online or from catalogs, even from out-of-state companies. You get to pay this when you fill out your annual return. They call it a "use tax", but it is coincidentally charged at the same rate as sales tax. See: [url=http://www.dor.state.nc.us/faq/use.html [/url]

[jfre81]

This is exactly the kind of stuff I point people on the Texas forums toward when they start complaining about taxes. We have it better tax-wise than most high-population states, even if the property taxes are high...

If NC provided better services for what they take I'd think about keeping my Texas directness to myself, shutting up and bending over for the state like they do in N'Awlins. (Louisiana sucks, by the way - I forgot if I mentioned that earlier when saturnfan brought it up, but I just wanted to beat that horse to death for anyone who ever entertained the idea of moving there - food's one of a kind there though)

Honestly, some of Louisiana's roads are better than some of NC's. That is not, by any means, a compliment.

I hate you, Sunnybrook Road, regardless if you are a wasted strip of asphalt that cannot read.

[MrsSteel]

Originally Posted by jfre81

The only thing I really think the people on this subforum distort is the tax situation in NC.

Actually, I would not say that most of the people on this forum are distorting the facts. I think that they rarely mention the details because either (1) they are natives or long-term residents of NC and don't understand that the tax system is very different here compared to other states or (2) they are transplants and find that, even with the additional taxes, it's still cheaper than where they lived before. Let's face it. Most people who are moving to NC are not from the middle of the country. They're from California, Florida, New England, and other places where the price for everything is more expensive than in NC.

That wasn't the case for me, though. EVERYthing is more expensive here than where I come from (Oklahoma). Sales tax, car tax, gasoline, insurance .... ugh. The car insurance was the biggest shock for us, though. We pay nearly 400% more here than back in Oklahoma! Seriously! Most of that is due to the difference in laws in this state. For example, my husband is fairly new to this country and has only had a driver's license for 2 years. In NC, your car insurance rate partly depends on how long you've been driving. In Oklahoma, however, they consider the actual age of the driver. So here in NC we're charged a hell of a lot more because they lump him in with all of the 17-year-olds. In Oklahoma, however, they recognize that he is in his late 30s & is a more mature individual, so he is charged the same as all of the other over-25s out there. Absolutely infuriating! And we certainly weren't expecting that. Luckily, the rate goes down for every year he has his license, but it was still quite a shock.

Anyway, the point is that there are a lot of surprises out there. Sometimes it feels as though you have to know the exact question that needs to be asked in order to learn about these things. Frustrating. But nevertheless, my husband and I enjoy living in NC and my husband likes his job, so we'll just have to grin & bear it for a little while longer. And perhaps write a few letters to our representatives.

As for charging additional property tax for the cash you have in the bank? Well, that certainly has not happened to us. Where do you think you read that? Could you provide us with a link?

[jfre81]

My confusion on the tax statutes has already been cleared up. Apparently it is something that has been done before.

We have people moving to Texas from just about everywhere imaginable, including places with less state-level tax burden. They come over and wig out bigtime over the property taxes. They could use Texas' broad homestead exemptions to help keep their taxes manageable, or they may have just gotten too happy and bought too much house than what they needed because the initial sticker price was a steal. Some take their ball and go home, and some stay put and deal with it. It's the decision you make when you move somewhere and it doesn't exactly fit what you were looking for after all. You came in one way or another, and it's just as easy going out.

Be careful, that glare traveling west on I-10 on a clear evening in Pensacola can be hell.

PS-When Houston gets hit by a hurricane, Oklahoma's still right there and it will forever suck until our streets are dry the next day.