Closing a home - need guidance (Houston, Dallas: mortgage, how much, houses)

[Jcbocky]

As someone who just came from a home with high electric bills and an outdated HVAC unit, I would recommend just walking away from the house. We had a 2000 sq ft house with $500+ AC bills during the summer even though we never went lower than 76 degrees and I was very strict on turning off lights, minimizing power usage, etc. our home was older and had all sorts of gaps and leaks in the structure so not efficient for cooling at all. Our system was also 20 years old. It still used R-22 for the coolant and we were quoted $10k to replace the entire system (still don’t know if that was reasonable, we never got another opinion). For comparison, our new house is 3000 sq ft and our most recent electric bill was $250.

[mSooner]

Originally Posted by tcualum

I also recommend getting a pool company to inspect your pool. The first time we bought a home with a pool, I wanted to get it inspected by one but my husband overruled me. It turns out that it needed a new pool robot. An inspection would have uncovered that and would have been much cheaper. During the inspection, the pool inspector can also go over with how to operate the pool equipment and how to maintain the pool if you plan to do it yourself.

Agree on this. Anecdote time! We went under contract on our new home in TN and were very wary of the pool built into the side of a hill--some weird vinyl liner concrete/metal shell masterpiece half in and out of the ground. The inspection, the pool care team who opened the pool, and another pool company all agreed something was off and all pointed us to the same expert. We paid him to come do an inspection--the back wall of the pool was bowing and ready to collapse down the hill below. It wasn't repairable and the estimate to redo the pool was over $100k. We almost walked away, but the sellers agreed to remove the pool and deck over it--we didn't want one to begin with and were fine with that concession. Funnily enough, I recently met the seller and she still insists all it needed was a new liner...but otherwise she is great haha.

Pretty drastic situation, but that would have been an expensive, unsafe mess.

[where2settle]

Originally Posted by Jcbocky

As someone who just came from a home with high electric bills and an outdated HVAC unit, I would recommend just walking away from the house. We had a 2000 sq ft house with $500+ AC bills during the summer even though we never went lower than 76 degrees and I was very strict on turning off lights, minimizing power usage, etc. our home was older and had all sorts of gaps and leaks in the structure so not efficient for cooling at all. Our system was also 20 years old. It still used R-22 for the coolant and we were quoted $10k to replace the entire system (still don’t know if that was reasonable, we never got another opinion). For comparison, our new house is 3000 sq ft and our most recent electric bill was $250.

Thanks for sharing and thats what I'm concerned about. Not their consumption patterns but the more I read about these older homes consuming 2 to 3 times more utilities it gives me pause. And it doesn't sound like fixing it is going to easy or cheap.

[where2settle]

Originally Posted by Jcbocky

Our home was older and had all sorts of gaps and leaks in the structure so not efficient for cooling at all. Our system was also 20 years old. It still used R-22 for the coolant and we were quoted $10k to replace the entire system (still don’t know if that was reasonable, we never got another opinion). For comparison, our new house is 3000 sq ft and our most recent electric bill was $250.

Jcbocky how old was your earlier house? The houses I'm looking at are from the late 80's.

I also just read r22 is being phased out this year and folks running ac units from before 2010 will need to get their ac replaced. The house has 3 of them and that itself will be a huge expense.

[where2settle]

Originally Posted by mSooner

Agree on this. Anecdote time! We went under contract on our new home in TN and were very wary of the pool built into the side of a hill--some weird vinyl liner concrete/metal shell masterpiece half in and out of the ground. The inspection, the pool care team who opened the pool, and another pool company all agreed something was off and all pointed us to the same expert. We paid him to come do an inspection--the back wall of the pool was bowing and ready to collapse down the hill below. It wasn't repairable and the estimate to redo the pool was over $100k. We almost walked away, but the sellers agreed to remove the pool and deck over it--we didn't want one to begin with and were fine with that concession. Funnily enough, I recently met the seller and she still insists all it needed was a new liner...but otherwise she is great haha.

Pretty drastic situation, but that would have been an expensive, unsafe mess.

That sounds scary. We will definitely get a pool inspection done.

[fwsavemoney]

Originally Posted by where2settle

So we received the utility bills. And frankly we are stunned.

Water, sewage trash: 220 for last month. Looks like water was heavily used for the pool this month so probably ok
Gas: 120
Electric: averages 350 for Oct to Apr, 700 for Sep and May and 800-950 for June/July/Aug. This is the one that's simply killing us.

Its a 3800 sqft property with a pool

Woah! My house is slightly smaller, built in early 90s - with my sprinklers running generously, my water bills are around $130 in the summer. Gas should be under $50 at this time of the year and my electric bills rarely cross the $200 mark (granted I like it warmer than most). I am guessing the current owners like their house super cool, hot water super hot and they may have used the pool a lot.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by where2settle

Jcbocky how old was your earlier house? The houses I'm looking at are from the late 80's.

I also just read r22 is being phased out this year and folks running ac units from before 2010 will need to get their ac replaced. The house has 3 of them and that itself will be a huge expense.

R-22 phase out has been in the works for many years. It will fall into short supply at some point.

The holy grail refrigerant is CO2 but operating pressures are so high it's so far unworkable outside very controlled environments.

[turf3]

As to flood zones and your risk of flooding, the best thing you can do is to get out there and look over the topography. The flood zone maps are not accurate at the individual-house level. Is it a low-built house, is it in a draw, is the next door neighbor's house above yours and their land sloping toward you, do you go down from the street to get into the garage door, so every time it rains hard there'll be great sheets of water coming down the gutter and pouring right into your driveway and garage? You've got to use your head. If it's down next to a creek or wooded draw, look at the height of the debris stuck in the nearby trees. Use your nose to sniff for moldy, musty smells.


As to roofing, while putting asphalt shingles over wood shingles is not best practice, houses can and do exist for decades leak-free like this. Rejecting a house with a water tight roof where the asphalt shingles are over wood shingles, just because of that, is like cutting your nose off to spite your face.

[gsoy]

We are in a 90's built 4200 sqft house and our last bill was $150 (for May-June). In the fall/winter, always under $100. We do not keep the house in freezing temperatures but keep it very comfortable. Those numbers are extreme.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Rakin

Keep in mind electric bills are very much a personal item.
How cold does your wife like it, do you work from home, how many kids in and out all day, do you shop for rates.


Pools will easily cost you 150$ a month in chemicals, electric, repairs and that's if you take care of it yourself.

For the inexperienced, your better buying in a subdivision with a community pool.

To the OP:

I tend to agree with escanlon and Rankin just about always regarding these topics. Here I'm going to diverge at least a little.

For sure power bills are driven by user inputs to a significant degree. However, for me to get to $1,000 power bill and a $130 gas bill sometime over May and June I'd have to run the pool pump at 100% 24x7, set the AC to 60F, open the doors and turn on the heat.

Regarding the gas bill the only thing that makes any sense is if they were heating their pool a lot or heating a spa all the time.

Here in the Dallas house we run a variable speed pool pump that's about to become 9 years old on high a lot during the summer. We just replaced a 5 ton R-22 unit last August. Before that the highest power bill we've had was a shade under $500. That was a blazing hot July when we also had numerous guest over the month and constant stream of our daughter's buddies in the pool. Since the AC replacement we haven't crossed $400.

________________

Also there is no need for pool chems and power to be $150 per month....repairs are an X factor for sure.

My pool pump on high (@ 2810 RPM) draws 1450 watts. At my all in power rate and assuming it's on high 10 hrs. per day that equals $60.90 per month - for me that would be a worst case month. And virtually no one needs to run their pool on high for 10hrs/day outside of June 15 - Sept. 15 if that. Via experience I know my pool motor costs us $55mo. for the three hottest months, $35 mo. for the next two and $20 for the rest. Via readout for our smart meter and using a power prover for a while I'm quite sure our pool motor costs right that the $375 yr. I just noted.

Chems. During that same June 15 - Sept. 15 span our chlorine use is $1.60 - $1.75 per day. Acid use is more variable but roughly $0.25 per day and baking soda maybe $0.7 per day. Let's call that $2.10 for easy math. So my chemical use is right at $62.10mo. for three months, right at $40 for another two. And less than $25 the rest. That's $522.5 for the year.

441.3 + 375 + I dose my pool 1x per year with boric acid at around $70 = $876.3 leaving a little over $900 per year for repairs.

The rub is most people are going to run to a big box pool store and buy trichlor or dichlor tabs, bagged shock, clarifiers, phosphate reducers, Ph increaser etc. and spend $2,000+ on chems and have worse looking pools while fighting phosphates and rising cyanuric acid numbers. Others will run salt which poses its own set of issues.

That's a long way of saying there is more than one way to skin a cat.