The Retire and Relocate Thread™

Sharxfan said:
I had a buddy that lived in TX and recently moved because those TX tax assessors are on the ball and make sure your taxes go up when home prices go up but aren't as diligent when they go down. Sure they don't charge income tax but you are going to pay for it with higher property taxes.

If you are looking to retire also check into what kind of taxes their are on the different types of retirement income you are expecting to receive.
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Thanks for the advice.
 
Thailand.

My Wife and I just returned. I'm trying to get her onboard with the idea of retiring there. If we rent out our homes here, we could literally live like Kings!!!
 
yesterday I looked at a home in Mineral CA on highway 36 ten miles from Lassen Natl Park, with the national forest out the back yard. Beautiful. Elevation 5000 feet, so snow... Tempting.
 
Fire insurance is what I see as the limiting factor when looking at homes in cool places like that.
 
There's no way anything actually mitigates the cost of fire insurance in heavily forested areas like that. Insurance companies will take an individual approach to charge you more, but they will not take an individual approach to charge you less.
 
byke said:
There's no way anything actually mitigates the cost of fire insurance in heavily forested areas like that. Insurance companies will take an individual approach to charge you more, but they will not take an individual approach to charge you less.
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I agree. They are blood suckers. We were contemplating building a retirement home around Grass Valley / Mendocino, but after the Paradise Fire, EVERYTHING has changed.
 
If I could give advice to anyone that were determined to live in those types of areas that truly wanted to mitigate the cost of fire insurance, either make sure that the property value is essentially disposable to you, or get to a lower elevation where you're not in a forest and are more in the oaks, because they're not as dense and within the canopy of one oak you would otherwise have thirty forest trees, so the number of trees removed relative to the number of cleared square feet is way better. Live at a property like this and not this. The former could have a very reasonable twenty trees removed around the house, annual mowing/tilling around the property, and then you could easily and safely defend it with a garden hose. If a fire came through at the latter, you could have taken out a hundred trees and you could still be dead meat if you didn't hit the eject button immediately, and even then it can be a gamble depending on when/how the fire comes in. If it comes in the middle of the night close by where you're slow to respond and it comes in from your exit road, then you're off hiking in smoked-out woods at night with pets and whatnot and that's a really bad situation to be in.
 
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The sooner homes in WUI areas are insured at appropriate rates, the better. Right now the California regulators essentially subsidize fire insurance for these areas at everyone else's expense.

You should not be allowed to live in those kind of areas unless you are prepared to lose it all, on your own dime.
 
lefty said:
Thailand.

My Wife and I just returned. I'm trying to get her onboard with the idea of retiring there. If we rent out our homes here, we could literally live like Kings!!!
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This is my plan. But do you have a healthcare strategy?
 
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mercurial said:
You should not be allowed to live in those kind of areas unless you are prepared to lose it all, on your own dime.
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How would this translate into something tangible, like what does it actually mean to be prepared to lose it all on your own dime? And how does that formula mix with pge issues? Does the same apply to people potentially affected by san bruno types of issues?
 
lefty said:
Thailand.

My Wife and I just returned. I'm trying to get her onboard with the idea of retiring there. If we rent out our homes here, we could literally live like Kings!!!
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Subscribed.
 
Butch said:
there ia a Hazardous Tree Removal Project going on now https://tehama-conservation-fund.org/2020 Programs/tindersmart-tehama.html
which mitigates this. I see the same thing on some trails off skyline.It's pretty awesome.
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Nothing mitigates it. Be sure you look into it before purchasing, Butch. There's a reason there are so many homes available for purchase in fun places. Our insurance went from $1200 to $4300, and then after a year at $4300 our company dropped us, thereby giving themselves a nifty ~3-year cushion to GTFO of CA. Now we pay $4500 to the CA Fair Plan to have fire/smoke/internal explosion coverage on our house only. That doesn't cover our garage, pump house, carport, storage shed, fence, etc for fire. Just our 735sf house. An $800 supplemental policy covers everything else, except for fire on the aforementioned structures.

And, yeah, we can afford to lose that house in a fire, and we can afford to rebuild it on our own dime. Sounds so easy, right? Drop fire coverage and just insure for everything else, right? Wrong. I've been trying to find an insurance company to do just that and nobody will do it without a CA "Fair" Plan fire policy. Nobody is forcing me to put comp and collision on my brand new car that I just paid cash for, so why am I being forced to put fire coverage on a house that I paid cash for?


Edit: As far as everyone else helping to pay for my "subsidized" insurance, I'd like to give a big "thank you" to whoever you are. No, really. `Prish! :rolleyes
 
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Our insurance went from $4500 to $10k the last two years and was dropped this year. Ca fair plan is anything but. They wanted $15k between both policies. GFY. I just bought an excavator to do some clearing. We have one tree with 100 feet of our place. Those prices are extortion at this point. We can buy enough equipment to keep us safe and still spend less than paying insurance costs.
 
panthera said:
Our insurance went from $4500 to $10k the last two years and was dropped this year. Ca fair plan is anything but. They wanted $15k between both policies. GFY. I just bought an excavator to do some clearing. We have one tree with 100 feet of our place. Those prices are extortion at this point. We can buy enough equipment to keep us safe and still spend less than paying insurance costs.
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I get it. That was kind of our thought, but we have a creek running through our property and the general public can get to it through our property down by the bridge. Well, from anywhere, really. It runs on solid granite. All I need is for someone to come onto my property, slip and fall on that granite, and then take us for everything we've got. I need to have liability coverage on our house, and I should be able to get it without having to participate in the CA Fair Plan racket. Not sure what we're going to do yet...
 
Yeah we are trying to get something without fire but we are told they will not insure for everything else and leave fire out. We have to have fire in there. All I can say is they are criminals and trying to extort us. We have never had any claims on our property or cars. What you described is exactly the situation that troubles me. If someone gets hurt they can go after us.
 
We were paying over 20K on the calif. fair plan....our new home, in the city limits and with a fire hydrant right out front, is also now on the calif fair plan, but at a fraction of what we were paying.
That said, not much to burn here anymore.
One problem is the way most homes are built as I understand it.
Most homes have a vented attic. In a wild fire situation, all it takes is hot embers in the air to be sucked into those vents to start a home fire.
If we built homes with fire rated roofs and siding with sealed attics, ie: conditioned space, we would all stand a better chance of not going up in smoke.
DT
 
panthera said:
Our insurance went from $4500 to $10k the last two years and was dropped this year. Ca fair plan is anything but. They wanted $15k between both policies. GFY. I just bought an excavator to do some clearing. We have one tree with 100 feet of our place. Those prices are extortion at this point. We can buy enough equipment to keep us safe and still spend less than paying insurance costs.
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What county are you in?
 
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