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The country’s top metro coastal areas, some of the most expensive places to buy a home, also have the highest invisible costs of homeownership.
The typical homeowner in the New York metro area spends an average of roughly $24,400 a year on property taxes, home insurance and maintenance — on top of mortgage payments. That’s the highest total additional costs in the country, according to a report from Zillow and Thumbtack, a directory of home maintenance professionals.
San Francisco followed in second, with total hidden costs of about $22,800 a year. Boston came in third, with costs of about $21,300 a year.
These figures far surpass the national average of just under $16,000 a year, a figure that climbed 4.7 percent over the past year, according to Zillow. Meanwhile, the national household income increased just 3.8 percent.
It has also become more expensive to buy a home. Interest rates are higher than they had been in the post-pandemic years, and home prices hit record highs over the summer.
Meanwhile, the Phoenix and Nashville regions had the two lowest totals for extra homeownership costs in the U.S., coming in at roughly $13,400 and $14,300, respectively.
Seattle had the highest average cost of home maintenance, according to the report, of about $12,900 a year. Home maintenance estimates were calculated based off a list of essential home-care and weather-related tasks, like appliance maintenance, air conditioning maintenance, fireplace cleaning and lawn care, among many others.
Insurance costs were the highest, unsurprisingly, in many Florida metros, where hurricanes are the norm. Miami came out on top, with estimated annual costs of just over $4,600 a year.
New York also placed No. 1 on another metric: the highest estimated property taxes in the country, at more than $10,800 a year.
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