Housing in Orlando

[udflyer00]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to put something out there that maybe some of the locals might be able to help answer. For quite awhile our family has tossed around the idea of trying to relocate to the Orlando area. However this always gets shot down when we start looking at the available houses. We are a family of 6, and are currently in a 4 bedroom in Ohio that we bought for about 170. Now when I look for that same type of house in the Orlando area they go from 210-260k. My wife and I both work, but just not sure how to manage that high of mortage. So I was curious, do Orlando residents do longer mortages or is the pay a bit higher in the area to account for the higher housing prices?? I'm in the IT industry and my wife is a Nurse so we have a decent income, but a mortage in the above range is 2k-2500 a month, estimated for 30 years. Just seems so high that I'm really unsure how to do it.

Again I know this may be kind of a personal question, and if you don't want to share I completely understand, but this has always been the one hang-up when we look to relocate so I wanted to put it out there to see if others may be able to share some local insight. Obviously the easy answer is to put more money down to bring the overall housing cost down closer to our current 170ish mortage, but thats an awful lot of spare $'s we just don't have laying around.. Dang kids!! haha.

Thanks for looking and any responses, it is a tough one due to the size of our family we need a slightly bigger house, which of course drives the price up.... :S

Regards,
Mark

 

[BlovesC]

30 year mortgages are the norm. Real estate prices are generally affected by numerous factors in the area...the job situation, average income, population, land availability, etc. You can't really compare two different states and expect to pay the same. Prices are generally higher in main cities, no matter what state you're looking at. House prices in Orlando are higher because more people want to live there. There's a ton of businesses based there and more jobs, which people don't want to have to commute to, there's more schools, more entertainment options, etc.

I moved to FL from NJ, and in NJ real estate prices were MUCH higher, but wages were generally higher as well. I had a new job lined up before I moved (I never, ever would have to come to a new state without having my foot in the door first) and took a very small paycut, but I was considerably lucky because my industry (healthcare) is huge in FL, many fields are not as comparable.

Do you have a specific reason for looking in Orlando proper? Are you considering a job transfer to an office there? Unless you have specific needs to be in Orlando itself, I'd advise you to look at towns outside Orlando, like Davenport or Clermont or Haines City, etc. The real estate will be cheaper, the quality of life will be a bit higher (and the traffic won't be quite as horrible) and you'll be 20-30 minutes away from the city when you want to explore. Your wife will have no issue getting a job. I'm not sure what your specialty in IT is (security? system administration?) but there's always postings at companies in our area.

Whatever you do, do NOT take on a mortgage that you worry is more than you can afford, as that's just a recipe for disaster. If you're serious about your move, take a few trips out to the area, scope out towns, look at schools, apply for jobs, and have everything else lined up first. You can always get a short-term apartment lease when you move down here so you can officially continue your real estate hunt when you know exactly what your budget is once you've landed your new jobs.

 

[mommagoof]

We don't live in Orlando but in Colorado. Your estimate of the mortgage payment seems high to me. Our house was 260k and our mortgage payment is $1742 a month but it Includeds property taxes, Homeowners Ins and PMI.

 

[Bren's Mom]

Your mortgage estimate is way off.

A $250,000 home, with 3% down, is financing $242,500. At 5% interest, for 30 years, the payment (P&I) would be $1302. (Rounding)

You need to add taxes and insurance to that, plus PMI, but you need to do that anywhere.

 

[vicki_c]

You need this:
http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/

Even if I put in conservative assumptions, it shows $1369/month.

Wages are lower in Florida than many other places, but I don't know about comparing it to wherever you are in Ohio. I had difficulty obtaining a higher salary when I moved from WNY to Central FL. My company is HQ in Florida, and traditionally they have not had to offer salary bumps (or not much) for people relocating because so many people wanted to relocate to Florida, so they were willing to forego the salary.

Also, I don't know where you are looking specifically and I don't know much about Orlando suburbs because I lived on the coast. But housing prices in FL are really quite low. As an example, I built a house for $200K in 2005. It was worth $350K+ at its peak in late 2005, early 2006. That same house is now worth only about $140K. From what I have heard, FL housing prices have not yet started to recover much. (not really relevant to your question other than to say your estimate of $260K sounds high, but again, I don't know what your $170K house is like and what you are comparing).

 

[udflyer00]

Thanks for all the information and correcting me on the mortage... I went back to the zillow page for just a house i was looking at and you are correct it says estimated mortage of $1156 with 5% down. What caught my eye was the "Rent Zestimate" that they listed at 2,229/mo... The mo caught my eye as the mortage payment... So I apologize for that misunderstanding, but the numbers you've shared above are not so much higher than our current monthly payment. Our monthly is about 1200, but that includes our housing insurance. So I guess in reality it's really not that much different.

Thanks though for the information on the areas to look, I was just zillow searching in Winter Garden as we've driven through there on our way down... However schooling is a big factor with my wife, with the 4 kids right now between 4-11 she would definitely want to pick a nice district. As for work, do you know what pediatric hospitals are in the area? That is my wife's expertise as she really doesn't like working with adults... She says we're too picky!! haha Didn't Disney open a children's hospital?? As for myself, I'm just a sys admin, specializing in email support. I've been playing around with some of the job searches just to see what the possibilities are. I guess it doesn't hurt to apply to see if I get any bites before we worry about the rest of the details... That's the toughest part, taking that 1st step away from everything you've become so familiar with...

Thanks again for sharing some of your own details, it really helped me see i was not doing the calculations correctly...

 

[mommagoof]

Thanks for all the information and correcting me on the mortage... I went back to the zillow page for just a house i was looking at and you are correct it says estimated mortage of $1156 with 5% down. What caught my eye was the "Rent Zestimate" that they listed at 2,229/mo... The mo caught my eye as the mortage payment... So I apologize for that misunderstanding, but the numbers you've shared above are not so much higher than our current monthly payment. Our monthly is about 1200, but that includes our housing insurance. So I guess in reality it's really not that much different.

Thanks though for the information on the areas to look, I was just zillow searching in Winter Garden as we've driven through there on our way down... However schooling is a big factor with my wife, with the 4 kids right now between 4-11 she would definitely want to pick a nice district. As for work, do you know what pediatric hospitals are in the area? That is my wife's expertise as she really doesn't like working with adults... She says we're too picky!! haha Didn't Disney open a children's hospital?? As for myself, I'm just a sys admin, specializing in email support. I've been playing around with some of the job searches just to see what the possibilities are. I guess it doesn't hurt to apply to see if I get any bites before we worry about the rest of the details... That's the toughest part, taking that 1st step away from everything you've become so familiar with...

Thanks again for sharing some of your own details, it really helped me see i was not doing the calculations correctly...

Try not to follow Zillow to much either, in our neighborhood alot of the "orginal" owners are leaving and young families our moving in. I know that 3 of the houses on my block in the last 6 months have sold for way lower than what Zillow says.Just checked on my own house, the month and year are correct when we bought but price is wrong.