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August 2, 2006
What Does It All Cost??
I was curious what the actual annual costs of owning a brownstone are??? You buy a building for 1-2 million and then what? What do annual taxes, insurance, utilities actually come to?
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Here's my partial list:
Insurance $8K
Taxes $2.5K
Water/Sewer $0.3K
Electric $3.6K
Gas $3.6K
Endless things breaking $10K per year (?)
You're also going to want service contracts: heating contract, a/c contract, plumbing contract
Oh yeah...walking in your own front door at the end of the day...priceless
Posted by: Washingtonian at August 2, 2006 2:33 PM
Look at any corcoran brownstone listing and you can see annual taxes: they usually vary from 2000 to 5000 annual, although they are all on a fixed path to rise over time no matter WHAT happens to the economy or house prices!
Insurance is pretty cheap I think typically less than half property taxes.
Utilities are whatever you use. If it is multi family you get raped on common area electricity charges.
Repairs: well that can be almost nothing for years to major work. Usually the three things people have to pay for sooner or later are
boiler
roof
facade
Many owners buy, live in, and sell a brownstone without ever getting hit with any of these things.
Generally my impression is that owning a brownstone is a lot cheaper per square foot than owning a co-op with a doorman and/or elevator if you pay well to buy one in good condition.
Posted by: Anonymous at August 2, 2006 2:37 PM
... and its even less per square foot if you buy a fixer-upper and pay well to do a careful, thorough renovation.
Posted by: naomi at August 3, 2006 4:13 PM
If it's more than 3-family, RE tax could be over 15K.
Posted by: Anonymous at August 9, 2006 5:51 PM
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