Housing, some things going up some not
Under Primary Home, I put a primary real appreciation rate of 2% as that is about what housing has done in my part of Texas. The program then shows my home value going up 2% a year.
Under the Annual Property taxes and Annual Insurance those items are also going up 2% a year (although I think that is wrong, they need to go up the amount of inflation, as I have seen a much larger jump in my taxes and insurance than either the real estate appreciation rate or the inflation rate).
but.... under Maintenance and Condo fees, I entered $1404, it never changes, show them still being $1404 till I die ( I wish). I think we got a bug.
Ginny
RSS
ginnyirvine at gmail.com wrote:Under Primary Home, I put a primary real appreciation rate of 2% as that is about what housing has done in my part of Texas. The program then shows my home value going up 2% a year.
Under the Annual Property taxes and Annual Insurance those items are also going up 2% a year (although I think that is wrong, they need to go up the amount of inflation, as I have seen a much larger jump in my taxes and insurance than either the real estate appreciation rate or the inflation rate).
but.... under Maintenance and Condo fees, I entered $1404, it never changes, show them still being $1404 till I die ( I wish). I think we got a bug.
Ginny
It's actually always been that way for that column. I'll let Larry weigh in.
Ginny: Take a look at the message labeled ANNUAL MAINTENANCE FEES in this subtopic. The reply may answer at least one of your questions.
Joe
Ginny: I had a similar concern with my property taxes and this is how it was answered:
Enter special expenditures...
There are a couple of ways to do this, but the easiest is to remove property taxes from your housing folder (make the value 0), leaving whatever rate of growth is appropriate for your neck of the woods. Make a special expenditure amounting to the intial value of your property taxes (I believe that it would be an excludible expenditure to keep the generic treatment of property tax deductions the same) and grow it at an appropriate rate. I don't have ESPlanner in front of me, but if memory serves, the growth rate is real, which means that inflation gets added, so if you just want the property taxes to keep up with inflation, then use 0% to grow. If you think there is some other real rate of growth, then use it.
You should remember that ESPlanner displays everything in real dollars, which means you're paying more nominal dollars every year for the same number (just keep multiplying by 1 + inflation to find out how much more).
Note that some states treat property tax deductions fairly bizarrely (D.C. and New York come to mind) so you may not wind up with an identical tax treatment but you should come close.
I hope this helps. -Joe