Monthly Expenses ___________________

This house pays for itself

Mortgage paid by rental income:

The asking price for the house is $298,500.00, down from $319.000.00 in spring of 2008.

Assuming a down payment of 12% this leaves a loan amount of $262,680.00

Based on a 30 year fixed-rate mortgage with an interest rate of 6.000%, this results in a monthly payment of: $1,574.89 a month.

Because of the ideal location of this house, I have always been able to rent out all of the rooms, now at a rate of $400.00 for each room plus utilities, and this was the price before the renovations to the house were complete.

During the years I have owned the house, I have also rented out the Den to students, providing four rented rooms with a Total Income of $1,600.00 per month.

Reduced Taxes:

Last year I requested a reassessment of the property to reduce taxes. After the reassessment, the reported value of this house is $217,500.00, down from about $224,000.00, and the total area of the house is now recorded as 1001 Square feet down from 1270 Square feet. In Amherst, tax assessments can trail real estate values by more that $50,000.00.

The measured area of this house actually is 1521.68 Square feet. For a more complete discussion of reported Square footage, click here.

Based on the reassessment, and the 2008 tax rate of $16.02 per thousand dollars of valuation, the taxes on this house are $871.09 quarterly for total of $3484.35 per year.

The buyer of this house will get a great asset, considering this lower tax valuation and the more than $52,000.00 in renovations to the property in the last six months.

Reduced Heating:

This house has many advantages, one of them being low oil usage. During this past 12 months we used a total of only 828.8 gallons of oil, for both heating and hot water, with five people living in the house. This is only about three 270-gallon tankfuls of oil for the entire year. This is more than a full tankful savings since the roof has been insulated and the boiler replaced. With the rising cost of oil heating, efficiency is increasingly important.

Frequent smaller deliveries keep the monthly bills lower.

Delivery      Gallons    Cost/      Price
date          delivered  gallon     paid
10/18/2007    161.1      $2.85      $458.97
12/6/2007     119.9      $3.20      $383.56
1/8/2008      121.3      $3.30      $400.17
2/8/2008      131.3      $3.15      $413.46
3/7/2008      136.4      $3.70      $504.54
5/9/2008      158.8      $4.10      $650.92

Total Gallons 828.8    Total Cost $2,811.62

               Average Cost / month $234.30

Next year the cost of oil may be $5.00 or more per gallon. The cost for heating a larger home could average more than $600.00 per month next year.