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earlyretirement
Participant[quote=svelte]
That’s what I was talking about back on June 25th!It’s probably going to be happening all over with interest rates where they are.[/quote]
Yep. Great call Svelte. It’s great to see them refinancing when interest rates are at such historic lows.
I guess entities all over (except Poway) should be taking advantage of these historic low interest rates. Even with the lower interest rates, it still makes sense to me to pay it off early.
When I asked the administrator what the rates went down from she said on average they were about 5.1% and many of them got refinanced down to 2% to 3% so I don’t imagine they can go much lower.
And doing a back check the CFD #4 looks like they’ve gone up the maximum 2% the past few years.
I was actually wrong that it went down $900 from last year. I was looking at an old property tax bill from the 2010/2011 tax year. It actually went down $550 NOT $900.
Just looking at the past 2 years property tax bills it looks like the CFD #2 was refinanced 2 years ago as well. It’s actually gone down the past 2 years in a row.
October 1, 2012 at 5:16 PM in reply to: OT: FLU has crossed the dark side. My personal mobile phone with data now :( #752129ParticipantHey flu. This reminds me of a VERY ugly incident several years ago. I also have TMobile and have a Blackberry with unlimited international emails.
I can use unlimited emails but data is very expensive at something like $15 per MB. Well, I called before an international trip and asked if I could tether my Blackberry to my computer and told them the countries I was going to.
The agent told me that I could tether it free without paying for the data. They obviously goofed as it’s only free in the USA but I should have double checked.
I went a few weeks on a business trip and used the Blackberrry for Google Maps, downloading attachments on emails and a few other things.
You can imagine my surprise when I got a $4,700 bill in one month!! Yes, just one month. I called TMobile and they said there was no way I could prove that they told me that information.
They did subtract $2,000 from the bill but I had a $2,700 bill. Just an ugly and expensive experience/mistake.
ParticipantThanks so much CVmom for taking the time to answer. I really appreciate it. I always love hearing the reasons parents decide to go the private school route when living in good public school districts.
I totally agree with your rational and approach with your situation.
On a side note getting back to Mello Roos taxes. It might be VERY interesting for those of you to note that have CFD #2 (Santaluz) that I just found out that the bond got refinanced last year at a lower interest rate!
I was actually VERY surprised to just get my property tax bill from the City of San Diego and I noticed my CFD actually went down $900+ from last year!
I called in to the administrator to confirm that the bond got refinanced at a lower rate, thereby reducing the annual payments. She said the CFD #2 is still scheduled to be paid off in 2030.
I’m sending off to get an exact payoff balance. The procedures for that are to send in a $500 check to this address below:
David Taussig & Associates
c/o Andrea R.
5000 Birch Street, Suite #6000
Newport Beach, CA 92660You need to send in a $500 check made payable to the entity listed above. Also, include your Parcel # and request for a payoff quote for CFD #2.
They said they will send in the pay off balance within a week or so. The $500 will be deducted from the pay off amount.
It’s refreshing to hear about them taking advantage of the low interest environment and refinancing this bond at a lower rate. Good to know not everyone is as reckless as Poway!
Participant[quote=AN][quote=earlyretirement]Private school would possibly be an option if I only had 1 child. But with 2 and most likely 3 after next year who in the world wants to spend up to $75,000 to $90,000 a year on private GRADE schools?[/quote]
Is $90k/year really that bad if you’re making $400-500k/year? Also, what about people who spend less on housing to pay for private school. Lets say you’re a couple who can afford a $1.2M house, but you decide to buy a $500k house instead. The difference over 30 years is ~$1.1M. To put 3 kids through private school at $90k/year comes out to be ~$1.1M. So, if you treasure your kid’s education more than you treasure your zip code, then that might be what you’d do. I live in a very middle class area and my neighbor sent all 3 of their kids to private schools. That’s just one example.[/quote]Sure, I guess if you’re making $500k a year it would be easier to swallow. But even if you were, that’s still a big chunk of change.
Absolutely in no way, shape or form am I saying private schools aren’t worth it. I’m a by-product of private schools. I went to a LJCDS esque type school from K-8. Very solid education but I much preferred the public school system and very glad my parents let me go to public schools for high school.
Private schools are great but it can be quite a sheltered bubble atmosphere. At least I found that experience growing up and going to private school.
Again, I’m not knocking parents that send their kids to private schools. I’m just saying that I find living in a great public school district well worth it and don’t feel I need to send my kids to private schools.
[quote=cvmom]
Agreed. This is pretty much exactly our situation–much smaller house than we could otherwise afford, but lots of $ spent on private grade school, CTY summer camps, etc. We think it is worth it.[/quote]
CVmom,
That was also the situation with my parents growing up. Smaller, less expensive house but lots of overtime, long hours and sacrifices to send 4 kids to private school.
I am very curious however, CVmom. Do you live in Carmel Valley? If so, the schools are excellent there. I am just curious on parents that live in excellent school districts that still send their kids to private schools.
If I can ask..what is your main motivation? Is it the possible Christian angle if you’re sending your kids to Christian private schools? I was always curious about this with some families that live in great school districts.
For example, one of our neighbors sends his child to a private Christian school and when I asked him the reason he said the only reason was because his child started going to preschool there and made many friends and he didn’t want to disrupt all the friendships.
[quote=svelte]
I just pulled out my tax bill from last year and this year.My MR went up 1.2%.[/quote]
Great that they didn’t raise it the full 2% last year but do you really think that will stay the trend of not going up the full 2%? I doubt there was ever a year they didn’t go up at least 1%..no?
ParticipantWow. Are you sure it would be a $100,000 payoff on a $540,000 house? That seems quite high. I’m still waiting on an exact payoff on my house.
My house value is double the value of yours and my estimated payoff is around $69,000. But of course there have been 9 years of payments already on it.
Still, $100k payoff seems quite high for that value.
[quote=sdseeker]The insiders guide to Mello Roos. Fascinating reading.
http://www.orrick.com/fileupload/1180.pdfThis is a bit technical but will really disclose the ugly underbelly of
MR. You will see how they are crafted to take advantage of a lack of transparency to the tax payer. If anyone doubts their MR will not increase the maximum 2% per year you should read this. You will also see how they have ability to issue new debt and extend the duration. I know I may not recoup my payoff if I sell anytime soon but I sleep pretty well having eliminated this crazy uncertain annual cost. YMMV.[/quote]Thanks for taking the time to repost that link sdseeker. I TOTALLY agree with you that there is a clear lack of transparency with regards to taxpayers.
The sad thing is most tax payers don’t seem to want to take the time to care about this issue. Heck, most people don’t even know the APR on their credit card so I don’t think they even know the first thing about how MR works.
Absolutely I agree with you they will raise the taxes the full 2% maximum each year. No way they will leave money on the table.
Taking a closer look at this, I don’t think it makes sense NOT to payoff the MR early if you plan to be in the home for the long term.
Just taking a look it doesn’t look like many people prepay their MR early. I looked at tons and tons of houses online and looked at the taxes on them, and I’ve never come across a house that had prepaid the CFD or at least saw $0.00 on the property tax statement.
Has anyone that has prepaid their MR off then sold their house? I’d be interested to hear how it affected the resale value on their house.
Participant[quote=bigwavedave]
Longer term I do see the benefit of central air. It seems the younger people these days are less able to cope with any form
discomfort. Kids just seem to want to stay inside with the windows shut at a constant 70°F. My primary residence a few miles away
from the rental property came with central air when we bought it, which I thought was rediculous. I think I’ve used it twice –
back in 1997. But I think that times are changing, more people will expect air conditioning.[/quote]I’m glad you see the long-term benefit of having central air. Even being so close to the coast.
I own several rental properties and I’d really LOVE a situation like this where a tenant was willing to pay for a big improvement like this.
The tenant sounds like an IDEAL candidate as well because she has a high credit score, stable work history/owns her own business, great track record at the last place she stayed, etc.
If she was willing to pay for it, I’d take the measures needed to protect yourself and get a real estate attorney to come up with a solid contract that protects you and I’d quickly get this done while it’s still hot out! LOL.
Being from the San Diego area you probably know that there are only a few weeks out of the year where you may need it but I can’t tell you how many potential renters from other cities that are moving here don’t know it and having a place with Central Air, especially if the other units in the area don’t is a huge selling point.
I find it a bit strange that some locals almost seem embarrassed or ashamed to use AC living close to the coast. It’s like some feel some guilt for using their AC or something. LOL. I don’t get it. My philosophy with a summer like this is use it if you have it!
I hope I get a renter like this! 🙂
Keep us posted which way you went with it.
Participant[quote=JBurkett19]Or, you could gather your quotes for the A/C, then get the money from your tenant in cash. Once the A/C is installed, pay the note, and take the capital improvement deduction over time as the tax code demands.
But, in all seriousness, I would do what the previous post says: Your tenant knew what they were getting in, so tell her NO, and move on. Make her adhere to the lease agreement, then when the lease terms are up, give her 30 days notice to move out.
Your tenant seems like a flake. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that your tenant has not a clue about how much a central A/C system costs.[/quote]
I agree with this advice. Maybe she has no clue at all how much it costs but if she is willing to escrow all the funds, and you have solid legal contracts in place that protect you, I see your downside risk very limited plus you will have the central air in the house after this tenant leaves.
I don’t care how close to the coast you are, if you have a summer like this where it’s hot and humid I consider AC a must.
Yes, I know AC is a luxury that close to the coast but if someone else is willing to pay for it and you have all the contracts you need in place to limit your risks, I’d say go for it.
It doesn’t matter that you might think it’s not necessary but it will be a big selling point in the future. I’m not sure about the whole “global warming thing” but I do know that it will be a big selling point in the future, especially if we have more hot and humid summers like this year.
September 27, 2012 at 5:15 PM in reply to: Average water bill for single family house San Diego? #751974Participant[quote=guidosmom]I saw your post and had to reply, since the exact same thing happened to us. We live in a nice neighborhood in Burbank. After coming home from 2 weeks in Italy, our water bill was $400 over normal!!! I have been in person to the dwp, showed ticket and hotel receipts, even had a representative from the dwp come and check to see if the meter matched up with the bill. It does. We have no leaks anywhere. Given our fence situation, there is unfortunately only one conclusion we can come to, and that is that our neighbor (the only direct one with a pool) tapped into our water supply to fill his pool. He knew the dates we were gone, and I can see on the detailed bill that he did it the night after we left, and the evening before we came home. I mean, the water was on full blast for periods of 10 to 12 hours. But, not having any proof, there is nothing we can do. We can only draw conclusions. It’s really hard to accept this betrayal, since he’s been a neighbor for over 20 years![/quote]
Wow! This is interesting to read about.
Actually one of our neighbors does have a pool! It would be hard for me to believe that someone would steal water. But maybe that is what happened.As mentioned in a past post, I scheduled for the City of San Diego to come out. They have this free program where they will come out and go throughout the inside and outside of the house.
I was pretty impressed by it and the guy that came out was very friendly. He first went throughout our house and put blue tablets in all the toilets to check for slow leaks from the tank. Then he went out and checked each station of our sprinkler and checked each individual sprinkler head.
Did calculations on the time of each station. He also brought a goodie bag with a some free stuff like a nice spray nozzle for an outside hose, grocery bag and some flower seeds as well as a 5 minute sprinkler timer.
He literally spent 1.5 hours at the house and gave several pages worth of paperwork and projections, tips to save water, recommendations for adjustment on sprinkler heads, loose sprinkler heads, etc.
It was very informative and educational.
All the old posts were correct that the sprinkler heads use about 60% to 65% of your total water bill in a typical household. Ours is probably less with the long showers/bath.However, I still think that it has to be a case of someone using some water while we were gone. Because we were gone for all but 1 week this summer on the previous bill (52 days of the 60 day cycle). And on THIS projected 60 day cycle (we are already on day 42 of the 60 day cycle), we will a bit less water than on the other bill. It just doesn’t add up.
After we came back from vacation I initially turned the sprinkler time down on each station but the gardner said that with the heat the plants/grass really needed the extra water so we set it back up.
A question for you, guidosmom. You mentioned, you could see on your detailed bill which day he filled it? Does your water bill actually detail out the dates and usage? San Diego bill doesn’t do that. Did you confront your neighbor about it or at least ask them about it?
I’d highly recommend the free inspection from the City. Funny, but I asked the guy that came out today how people find out about it. He said that it’s like my case….they get a really high bill and that gets them more aware and have the City come out and check the meter. He said in the majority of the cases, it’s a case of someone taking a wrong reading in which case the next bill is adjusted/credited.
He said the average shower puts out about 2.5 gallons of water a minute and the average bathtub puts out about 5 gallons of water a minute. We take longer showers plus we have the double shower head. Just doing a rough estimate it sounds like our shower/bath budget is higher than the typical family at about 25% of our total bill. We are using an average of 549 total gallons per day.
Also, I commented to this guy that worked for the City that came out how expensive water is here in San Diego. He said he has been doing this for 15 years and said that San Diego was the most expensive city in the country.
Is this true?
ParticipantI agree the Apple Maps really sucks. I would have held off on upgrading my Ipad if I knew they would have automatically deleted Google Maps and Youtube.
I love my Macbook Pro and my ipad but not impressed with the iphone 5.
Participant[quote=ocrenter]
That actually sounds like a really good idea, if the non-paying owner is actually engaged in the community, but most likely the non-payer would be one of those “drive in and garage down” types.
I have to say the Santaluz model of cutting cable/internet/gate transponder is one of the best I’ve heard of.[/quote]
“Drive in and garage down types”. LOL. Exactly. That’s the problem with that type. In some condos where I own, you can take the garage to park your car and then the elevator goes directly up to each apartment so you don’t actually have to face the “walk of shame”.
But still I’d imagine it’s embarrassing for everyone in the building to see how much you owe and are late. That usually guilted people into paying on time. When that didn’t work, the building started assessing big interest on the late amount and that helped.
But yes, I thought it was ingenious how they used those methods to get people to pay. Apparently it’s working very well as my HOA fees actually came down this year from last year. I think some of these things they are doing are new because they used a different system with the gates last year.
But this new system with the stickers is very high tech and they can deactivate them. Or for example, if you had some regular employee (some of my neighbors have live in staff/maids/nannies) in the event of a dispute, you can just give them the sticker # and Santaluz can deactivate it. Previously they used transponders which once someone had they could open. This is a much more secure system.
Participant[quote=ocrenter]
wow, that certainly works. hey, maybe the security guards are even given instructions to harass the delinquents.[/quote]
I doubt the security guards would harass them. They are SUPER friendly here. I think it’s just to make it so it’s inconvenient. Sometimes the lines for the non-residents (guests/vendors) on the left hand side can really be slow as every single guest has to go through security.
So it sounds like they just want to inconvenience them. Sounds like it’s working. I’m told before they took measures like this the delinquency rate was higher. But now it’s almost nothing.
In other places where I own, they print a list each month of the actual balance of all the people in the building so you can see when your neighbors are behind. But even that doesn’t seem to always work.
Participant[quote=ocrenter]
average private school would be approx $6k per year, x 12 = $72k.
I’ll just pay the MR, thank you very much… =)[/quote]
Exactly. And most private schools are much more than that. $72k X 3 kids = $216,000.
It’s getting obscene the University tuition rates now. I started saving up the day the kids were born. It’s a bit sickening thinking you will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in 4 year degrees for a few kids.
My hope is that Poway Unified stays one of the top school districts. Personally I think they will always do well. I’ve been impressed with the amount of parent involvement, volunteerism, donations, etc. That makes all the difference in the world.
Participant[quote=Essbee]I honestly thought that private schools are more like $30K per year. (I guess I’m thinking Francis Parker, La Jolla Country Day, and Bishops).
Where exactly are these $6K per year private schools? Because I’m spending almost that much on 3 hours per day of preschool!![/quote]
Yeah, some of them can be astronomical. I think ocrenter was referring to some Christian schools like Maranatha near 4SRanch – http://www.maranathachristianschools.org/Admissions_Tuition-Fees.php?SubSection=Admissions_Elementary
That seems to be between $7,300 to $9,000 per year for Elementary through high school. I don’t know much about that school but it looks beautiful from the outside.
Cambridge School – Kindergarten through 7th grade is $13,400 per year.
http://www.cambridgeclassical.org/files/admissions/TCS_2012-2013_Tuition_Schedule.pdf
La Jolla Country Day School ranges between $17,600 to $27,600 per year.
http://www.ljcds.org/page.cfm?p=1982
Francis Parker ranges from $20,500 to $26,000 per year.
http://www.francisparker.org/page.cfm?p=521
Bishop’s School is $28,900 per year.
http://www.bishops.com/admissions.aspx?id=1642
Absolutely ocrenter’s figures seem to be the most affordable private schools but absolutely some of them are as much as universities per year.
But I assume he was figuring a bit of a discount for multiple kids. I went to private schools growing up and I had siblings and I know these schools many times offer a multiple sibling discount.
Trust me…I looked at all the options when deciding where to live and how all the schools are. When it came down to it, that was a HUGE factor in where to live and what the schools were like in the various districts and public vs. private.
Private school would possibly be an option if I only had 1 child. But with 2 and most likely 3 after next year who in the world wants to spend up to $75,000 to $90,000 a year on private GRADE schools?
ParticipantAlso, one thing I forgot to mention is that the delinquency rates on HOA fees is almost zilch.
I own several properties around the world (some also in upscale developments) where the homeowners are constantly late or don’t pay their fair share of HOA fees, which can cause a burden on existing homeowners. It’s quite annoying dealing with that.
Watching how Santaluz deals with them is an eye opener and they truly don’t mess around.
For example, since the digital cable and high speed Internet are included in the HOA fees, you stop paying and they cut off access to that.
Also, the entire development is controlled by high tech stickers that you have on your car windshield or license plates to allow you entrance in one of several entrances into Santaluz.
They can deactivate those so it’s not convenient and you have to go through the security guard each time which I imagine could be much slower and a pain vs. the automatic gates which automatically open and have a separate lane.
They also mentioned they don’t hesitate to “rapid filing of small claims court actions to secure judgments”.
Me personally as a homeowner, I enjoy this extremely low delinquency rates and the actions the management company will take for those that don’t pay on time.
I found it very interesting these techniques and maneuvers. 🙂
It gives me a great feeling knowing that Santaluz is among the top 1% of community associations in the USA and will have the funds there to properly maintain the development into the future.
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