Cost of living in Seattle

[mrman78]

Originally Posted by midwest61021

Supposing a single male moves to the Seattle or King county area and rents an efficiency or 1 bedroom apartment? What would I likely average in utilities if I were frugal?

$20-30 with moderate usage - every OTHER month - so $10-15 a month (but they don't bill monthly).
My highest bill in the winter has been about $80 for two months not being frugal...

[sharmet]

Originally Posted by cowbell76

Are California property taxes really that low (meaning the rate, not the absolute amount, since that's based on the assessed value of the property)? I'm surprised that Seattle would be higher.

We will be coming from another no income tax state (NH) and I was thrilled to see that Seattle property taxes were so LOW! We pay about $6500 on a house assessed at $200,000. That's over $31 per $1000 of assessed value. I think this even trumps Texas. (This varies widely from town to town, though, and I am in a high tax town. There is, however, no correlation between high taxes and go

It depends on the area of California you live in. If you're in a suburb, chances are you're paying a tax on top of the base property tax rate. Not sure if they have mello Roos in ore states, but in newer areas like Irvine, your property taxes are almost pushed to 2% with mello Roos. Slap another $175-300 a month for HOA fees to "maintain the grounds" of your immaculate community, and even more if you live in a condo.

The house we were going to buy in the Austin area had an effective tax rate of 3.1%...so it was about the same as NH. It sort of scared us off. $900 a month in property taxes is insane to me.

I'm curious about car registrations too. My husband is putting off getting his car registered in CA since we just paid it in Texas. California wants almost $500 a year for his car, plus $250 for mine. It was $50 in Texas. We're exploring Seattle as an option because of California's income tax and the weather and food in Texas.