Any Derby Hill owners out there, or not? I say we leave housing bear’s decision up to him and provide him with the information he wants.
FWIW, I lived in a 3100 sf house very near DH for a couple years. The gas and electric were pretty cheap. Around $100/mo, if I remember. Probably only a bit more now. We didn’t have a/c, and if we did, we’d only have used it once or twice. There’s a great breeze up there, and it’ll blow right through your house unless you’re situated exactly wrongly. And it’s not too cold in the winter, either. Plus, being new houses, they’re very energy efficient. Your water bill will, of course, depend on your landscaping. Most of a typical home’s water goes to landscaping. I think we paid around 100-150/mo. It was a 5k sf lot with lots of grass. Trash is free (city provided).
We did our landscape very much on the cheap. We did most of our own landscaping work. We spent about 6k on concrete and flagstone, and maybe 2-3k on plants, grass, sprinkler parts, etc. Plus maybe 500 for day laborers. We had neighbors who spent well over 100k on their landscaping. So you can basically spend whatever you want.
