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Strongly suggest you consider renting in the area in order for you to explore the various towns and find the one with the best fit. With the housing down turn there are a lot of nice homes for sale and good prices. Shop around. I'm sure Roche provides relocation assistance, so take advantage of their knowledge.
I had no idea property taxes were so high, so this is really useful information.
We are definitely looking at a detached single family home with a garden (I'm a keen gardener and my son is sports mad) so the townhouse option wouldn't really be of interest to us. Looks lovely though - I had a look.
I think now is definitely a good time to move for us. We live about an hour from London so property prices in our area haven't dropped hugely and we would most certainly get a lot more for our money out there.
On the other hand, we have also been looking at San Francisco - wow is everyone out there a billionaire??
Thanks everyone for your really useful advice so far.
Yes we had all the flags and street parties out here! We had a National holiday for the occasion so everyone was watching it and it moved everyone to tears. We could do with a bit more patriotism in this country! I think we could take a leaf out of your book there! It was really a great day.
I have another question about US property taxes which has had me thinking. When you buy a house the property tax seems to be a huge proportion of your outgoings and obviously needs to be taken into account.
In the UK we do have a sort of property tax but nothing anywhere near as high, so your mortgage is your main concern. Most people (ourselves included) look forward to the day when they will be mortgage free and then can retire someday with relatively few outgoings.
So what happens when you retire and are (hopefully) mortgage free in the US? Presumably you still have to pay this enormous property tax out of your retirement pension? Do you earn enough to be able to do this? Sorry if this all sounds dumb! It's maybe irrelevant to us but I'm interested to know.
So what happens when you retire and are (hopefully) mortgage free in the US? Presumably you still have to pay this enormous property tax out of your retirement pension? Do you earn enough to be able to do this? Sorry if this all sounds dumb! It's maybe irrelevant to us but I'm interested to know.
You move OUT of places with high property tax like New Jersey. Since you don't have to be where the jobs are anymore, that's not as hard a task.
I have another question about US property taxes which has had me thinking. When you buy a house the property tax seems to be a huge proportion of your outgoings and obviously needs to be taken into account.
In the UK we do have a sort of property tax but nothing anywhere near as high, so your mortgage is your main concern. Most people (ourselves included) look forward to the day when they will be mortgage free and then can retire someday with relatively few outgoings.
So what happens when you retire and are (hopefully) mortgage free in the US? Presumably you still have to pay this enormous property tax out of your retirement pension? Do you earn enough to be able to do this? Sorry if this all sounds dumb! It's maybe irrelevant to us but I'm interested to know.
Yes the property taxes support local services, schools, roads, etc., so you pay it until you don't own property there. Most people I know living in the high tax areas are highly compensated so the tax doesn't sting as much.
I wish you luck with your job interviews. I just wanted to give you an FYI on Roche. You probably know this already, but Roche shed over 2000 workers in the last couple of years in Nutley, since their HQ moved to California with the Genentech merger.
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