Have you guys and gals missed me!?!? I’ve sure as heck missed you. That said, it was pretty nice not having to think of a blog post for the last four days. Don’t worry though, I’m back and in action…for good. I still can’t get in to the full swing of things (like stick figure cartoons) since I don’t have access to my computer or laptop right now. I’m hoping to be fully operational tomorrow though.
For the next few days, or weeks, Girl Ninja and I will be living at her parents’ house until we find our next place. Yesterday (our first day in Washington) we looked at three places. They all had some major pros and cons and were completely different from each other. We saw a 2bd/2bth 1,200sqft condo for $1,300/mo. A 1bd/1bth 1,500sqft condo for $1,200/mo. And a 1bd/1bth 750sqft condo for $850/mo. Although the 750sqft condo is waaaaay smaller then everything else we looked at, it is bay far the cleanest/ most modern/ updated unit of the bunch. Oh and did I mention it’s only $850/mo!?!?!
In San Diego we were paying $1,500 for a 610sqft one bedroom. Needless to say I’m pretty darn turned on by the possibility of cutting our rent payments by $500+ dollars a month, especially when we are getting 140sqft of extra living space. Cost of living adjustments for the win!!!!
Since my fingers are getting tired of typing on this little iPad keyboard, I’ll end today’s post with a few questions. How much is your rent or mortgage payment? What is the smallest place you’ve ever lived in (square footage)? How many places did you look at before deciding on your current one?
See you all tomorrow. With a stick figure…I promise 🙂
I pay about $1400/month for a 600 sq ft condo in the heart of downtown. The smallest place I’ve lived in was a 12×5 room, the house was shared with two other roomies. But I only paid $375/month for it! I miss that.
$850/month for a 750 sq ft condo sounds sweet! I say go for it! Good thing you didn’t jump on that overpriced beachside condo.
They charged you $375/month when you were in prison…weird
I pay about 1900/month mortgage/HOA/taxes for a 3bedroom townhouse. The smallest place I’ve lived in was a 8X10 room – rented it for the last 3 months of school. The cheapest place I’ve ever lived was a 10×12 room for the summer for $250 – but I shared the house with 7 other people, and we had ONE fridge – oy!
I probably looked at 150 houses before I picked this one – what can I say, it’s my first house, and I am picky!
851 sq ft = $750 1 bedroom apartment. Unfortunately when I renew it next month it goes up to $775. Pretty worth it though for all the space I have. I mean, I have a back yard at an apartment complex! Pretty sweet.
Our mortgage is $330/week (property taxes included) for our 1450 sq.ft. log home, which sits on 14 acres. Our first house was only 900 sq.ft. ($450/month in mortgage payments!) and before that we lived in a smaller 2 bedroom apartment.
When we bought the first house we looked at quite a few houses. When we bought this house we weren’t really looking too seriously so we hadn’t looked at very many.
Go for the 750 sqft one. We’ve lived in some small places 700, 750 and sub 600 sqft apartments and I can’t say we’ve ever missed the extra room. The first month you’ll have some places when you’ll bump into each other but after that you naturally adjust to the space and learn how to share it. Plus you’ll be locking in a savings of $4000+ compared to the next cheapest option and $7,800 compared to your current apartment. In one year!! That’s sweet.
We’ve paid as little as $650 as much as $1200 and are currently paying $750. Cheap rent is the best! We pretty much always go for the smallest (cheapest) apartment we can get in a good location for commuting.
I have a 1100 sq foot 2/1 w a huge backyard. Rent is $675. I found it on craigslist and moved sight unseen from a different state. It’s my favorite place ever.
$1400 per month for the mortgage at ~3000 sq ft. We looked at about 6 houses before this one.
Cheapest rent was $680/month for an ~2000 sq ft house before this one.
Once the mortgage is paid off, the monthly payment is ~zero~.
Where do you live where you don’t have to pay rent to your local government, i.e. TAXES? No insurance either?
Right now we pay $683/month ($863 if you include the taxes and insurance) for our mortgage on our 1300 sq ft home. I actually didn’t look at any houses before this one. I was moving to SC for grad school, and decided last minute to buy a house rather then rent an apartment. I was in MT at the time visiting family for the summer, so my mom went to SC for me, looked at several new communities I had found online, and sent me pics via email. She bought the house on my behalf (I gave her POA since I was in MT at the time) and so the first time I saw the place was when I did the walk-through (it was a new build) about an hour before I closed on it. So I guess I kinda bought my house without even really seeing it in person 🙂
As far as smallest and cheapest – I lived in a 2 br apartment my last two years of college – I think it was 750 sq feet maybe? And rent was $450/month.
$859 mortgage payment (including taxes and insurance) for 2200 sq feet. 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths.
Right now I’m paying $850 a month for 973 sq ft in the suburbs of Dallas. Great location, literally across the street from the Dallas Cowboys headquarters and practice facility and less than 10 minutes from work. My smallest apartment (outside of a dorm room) was probably a 700 sq ft 1 BR / 1 BA that I shared with a roommate that I didn’t know very well. The only reason I knew him was because he stole my gf a few years back. It was pretty weird.
Rent is $2700 a month for a 700 sqft 1-bedroom in NYC, of which I pay $1000 and my boyfriend pays $1700 since he makes about 3 times as much as I do. We looked at about 10 places before deciding on this one, although it probably seems like a crazy amount to some people outside of NYC it was actually a really good deal, and would go for a lot more if it was on the market right now. Needless to say I’m looking forward to moving out of the city when our lease is up – not a fan of $7 boxes of cereal either.
The smallest space I lived in was 525 sqft studio, the actual living/sleeping area was about 19’x14′. Had a nice view of the statue of liberty, that was about the only plus though…
I currently pay $1550 for (I think) 700 sq ft. It’s definitely worth it, since it only takes me 30 min. to get to work. By comparison, I was paying $495 a month for about 490 sq ft (that I could use) in my old apt (shared with a roommate, only thing I didn’t measure was her room) but it took 1.5 hours to get to work. Lifestyle inflation never felt so good.
I think I paid $300 a month for my first apartment, but that was back in 1970-something and it was in NJ before state taxes exploded. Right now, with 8 years to go on a 30-year loan, I pay $250 a month mortgage + $750 maintenance to my co-op association for an 800-sq ft unit. Adjust this down by deductions for property taxes and mortgage interest, as well as tax rebates from the county (much of the maintenance cost is my share of the complex’s underlying mortgage). Similar units in the complex (which is mixed rental/co-op) rent for about $1200.
As for you, I would agree that the $850 option sounds like the best. So it’s small. How much room do you need? If you’re saving eventually for a house and have no kids, it should suit you. Even after 22 years in an 800-sq ft apartment, I am always coming up with creative ways to save space without adding clutter.
I live in a semi-rural area. It’s about 10 miles out of town and ‘town’ has just over 50K people. I was blessed to find a house to rent from a couple I go to church with. It’s a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a huge living room, generous sun room, black top driveway, two car garage, full basement (half finished) and over an acre worth of yard. I pay $600 per month.
Before that, I rented a two bedroom, 1.5 bath townhouse only one mile from town for $598, but that included $49 for a large pet fee.
Mortgage payment (taxes and insurance included) on a 1330 square foot house in Texas = $780/month. We’re paying $1000 plus extra every few months to get it paid off in the next 10 years…then we’ll be looking at around $225/month for taxes and insurance. Yay for living in Texas!
The smallest place I lived in was a garage apartment in college…12×15 main room with mini-fridge and sink, tiny bathroom, and closet for $350/month all bills paid. I loved it…probably because it came after sharing a room that size in the dorms with community bathrooms…and my landlords were awesome.
We probably looked at around 20 places before buying our current house. If we would have been willing to give up our dogs we could have rented for a while and taken our time looking for houses. But we weren’t…so we found, bought, and moved in the span of one month…bleh, never again.
1595/month for something like… 700 sq feet? (I honestly have no idea. it could be 900). The smallest place I lived was about 475 sq feet, an it was 1425/month. We looked at about 10 rentals in person before choosing this one, and hours online of course
Total housing cost (mortgage/condo fee/property tax/content insurance) for our 1200 sq ft 2 bed/1.5 bath is $1472 about 40 minutes outside of Toronto; this accounts for about 25% of our net pay. The location is awesome (our commutes to work are less than 10 minutes); we looked at 4 places before deciding on this one. Smallest place I lived in was about 800 sq. ft., paying $860/month rent for a 1 bed/1 bath in the same city wer’re in now; we’d always said we would buy when the rent was closing in on $900/month.
We’ve been in our condo for 7 1/2 yrs; we’re actually looking to upgrade from a condo to a townhouse (started looking over the past couple of weeks); we’ll make a good profit off our current condo because we managed to make extra lump sum payments on our mortgage. Our condo fees are hefty because they include EVERYTHING (except phone), so we know we’ll be able to cover utilities costs when we move… BUT… if we move to the next city, we will have no choice but to buy a 2nd car (plus all the expenses that go along with it), yet you get more bang for your real estate buck an extra 15 minutes down the highway… lots to think about!
Cheapest rent was $450 when I first moved down to san diego. I lived in a house with two other guys. I wish thats all I paid now.
Current rent is $1400 for 810 sqft. My wife looked for about three months for this place.
go for the $850! especially since you’re already used to a smaller space–it’s a great opportunity. the problem with more space is that you feel compelled to fill it with more stuff! new furniture, new decorations, new rugs…AVOID!
I DID miss you, actually.
Dorm rooms aside (cause I wasn’t paying attention at the time and couldn’t tell you how small that was), smallest I ever lived in was a studio apartment of about 450 square feet, but I only paid $300/month rent for it. We now live in a 650-square-foot home and pay $450/month mortgage. It’s quite a scrunch after a few years living in first a 800-sqft apartment, then a 1200-sqft apartment, but for those we paid $600/month and $800/month rent respectively, so this is OK for now 🙂
My roommates and I pay $2900 for a 4-bedroom, 2.5 bath in Cambridge, MA. My share of that is $850 because I have the sweet master suite with walk-in closet and full bath. Not sure of the square footage, but I’d estimate it (very, very roughly) at 1,000. Very few places I’ve seen have the square footage readily available so everything is an estimate. My most recent apartment search we looked at 8-10 places before ending up pulling the trigger, with 6-10 being the typical (at least as far as I can recall) for most of my searches.
My rental history:
~1,000 sq ft/$2,000/4br/1ba/4 people (rural-ish area in college)
~680 sq ft/$999/1br/1ba/1 person (metro west Boston apt complex)
~850 sq ft/$1,375/1br/1.5ba/2 people (Boston suburb duplex)
~1,000 sq ft/$2,900/4br/2.5ba/4 people (downtown Cambridge townhouse) CURRENT
???? sq ft/$3,000/4br/2.0ba/4 people (Somerville, MA duplex) FUTURE
My roommate and I pay $1,100 for a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment in downtown, which is 1223 square feet. I think the smallest place I’ve ever lived was my freshman dorm room, but I’m not sure how small it was. My roommate and I looked at three different places in person and a couple more on line before settling on this one.
$1010 a month of a 3bed/2bath house we just bought. 1700 sq. feet
Smallest place was probably my dorm room which was like 400 sq. feet? maybe? My “half” was like $670 a month but it did include food.
We looked at around 8 houses before we decided. We only shopped one day before we found something too good to pass up on and knew it wouldn’t stay on the market long.
We pay just under $1100 a month (Canadian) for our 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. It’s about 1100 or 1200 sq. feet. It’s only 3 minutes from my office and I dread the thought of buying a house and having to commute to work again!
Smallest place was probably about 700 sq. feet when I was living alone.
We currently pay $724 for a 750(ish) sq. ft one-bedroom in the Dallas suburbs. I lived in a TINY place for about a year in college that was just at 500 sq feet. It was crazy! We looked at just a couple of places before we settled on our current apartment, primarily because we were set on the location and few complexes had availability during the time I needed. I use “I” and “we” interchangeably because I moved in before my wife and I married, then she moved in.
Btw, if you’re renting a condo, isn’t it called an “apartment?” I was always curious about that….
That sounds like a sweet deal…
I currently pay $959 (soon to be $1007) for a 500 sq. foot place in beautiful Alexandria, VA. It is an absolute STEAL for the neighborhood, but it’s still pretty pricey IMO.
My last apartment was in the nicest neighborhood of Pittsburgh (Shadyside, I miss you!), and I paid $425 for approximately 1000 sq. feet, but I shared that with a roommate. We had a dishwasher, central air, a garbage disposal, security system…it was a KILLER apartment and the landlord was really nice, She let us extend our lease by two months for our normal monthly rate when we were scrambling to make arrangements for the summer. Talk about huge sticker shock when I moved to the metro DC area and I’m hand washing my dishes and hovering around my window air conditioner in DC heat for more than double what I paid in my last place.
Sigh. Such is life.
Obviously, Seattle has a lower cost of living. San Diego is actually higher than Los Angeles. Since rent is so cheap, make sure you are considering shopping, and entertainment convenience.
Wow, I need to move… I pay $1000 for 450sq feet, in a 30 year old building! I guess its the location… d’oh
Property tax and insurance equals to about $250 month. 1500 sq ft 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 3car garage. Having a mortgage free home is similar to having a payment free car. You tend to stick with it for as long as possible.
Heads up – I am not able to post comments at all on your latest post. It’s not even given as an option anywhere.
PITI = $1200 per month. I looked at approximately 500 homes before settling on the one I purchased. The smallest place I ever lived was 120 sq ft.
I pay $168 bi-weekly on my mortgage for 1,100 square feet. That doesn’t include property taxes of $1,200/yr and insurance of $800/yr. My house is in a beautiful part of downtown!
The cheapest rent I paid was about $187/mth for my share of a 3 bdrm/2 bath townhouse, probably similar in size to my current house. It was a sublet from some university students who were moving away for the summer. I was 19 and it was a sweet deal!
Apparently I live in a very cheap town…
I share a 390 sf studio with my boyfriend, and it costs $1700. Thank you, San Francisco.