Please Help...

4Gas$

4Gas$

Club Member
My son got a job offer in Pontiac, MI and is looking to
rent an apartment, small house, condo, but looking on
the cheap, so most likely an apartment.

He wants to be within 30 min drive to Woodard & South blvd area.
What cities and or places to rent would you guys recommend?
(also recommend to stay away from)

This would be his first home after college, he is 23.

Thank you guys!
 
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I lived in the Northwest corner of Pontiac when I got out of school. Kind of white trash-ey, but I fit right in! I was on Meadowlawn just North of Kennet. I was just looking on zillow the other day, and you can still buy small houses in that neighborhood for well under $100k. You could get them almost for free 10 years ago, though, so don't pay too much! For apartments, I had a lot of friends from Oakland University living in the apartments near Perry/Lapeer and Walton.

-Geoff
 
I live in the downtown Auburn Hills area. I haven't looked at rentals, but there's a large sub that'd be between Squirrel and Adams on east/west and South Blvd and Auburn on north/south. Another area popular for Oakland University rentals is the sub that'd be the north side of Walton west of Squirrel.

There's also two apartment buildings going up now in downtown Auburn Hills. The one is called Fountain Circle and some of the buildings are already done and tenants are moving in while construction continues on the rest. Those are on the north side of Auburn just west of Adams. The other one should be done later this year and it's at the corner of Squirrel and Auburn. Here's a link to Fountain Cirlce: https://www.fountaincircle.com/ I live in that same area and can get to South Blvd and Woodward in less than 15 minutes any time of day.
 
And if you go east of Dequindre you leave Oakland county
and enter Macomb county. There's definitely a tax rate change... Might help.
 
RSWANNABE said:
And if you go east of Dequindre you leave Oakland county
and enter Macomb county. There's definitely a tax rate change... Might help.
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I know he’s referring to renting for his son. But as for purchasing, houses in Oakland county we looked at were $10,000-$13,000 a year in property tax. In Lapeer or St. Clair county comparable house, property and price, the taxes were like $4,500 a year. I don’t know how or why anyone lives in Oakland county.
 
camaromann said:
I know he’s referring to renting for his son. But as for purchasing, houses in Oakland county we looked at were $10,000-$13,000 a year in property tax. In Lapeer or St. Clair county comparable house, property and price, the taxes were like $4,500 a year. I don’t know how or why anyone lives in Oakland county.
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Oh my! My property taxes are $2,000 a year!

That is country living in Monroe County! Man is
my house gonna be easy to sell!
 
camaromann said:
I know he’s referring to renting for his son. But as for purchasing, houses in Oakland county we looked at were $10,000-$13,000 a year in property tax. In Lapeer or St. Clair county comparable house, property and price, the taxes were like $4,500 a year. I don’t know how or why anyone lives in Oakland county.
Click to expand...

Really depends on the city. Were in Farmington Hills and the Mills are actually lower then what we paid in Wyandotte in Wayne County. We pay around $5500 a year vs. $2800 in Wyandotte. But got twice the house and 10+ times the property.
 
My taxes were virtually unchanged moving from Sterling Heights to Rochester Hills...but that was 24 years ago. Still under $3000/year. House probably in the $330-$350k range.
 
Yeah forgot to mention larger house and 4x larger lot in Rochester Hills. But we have to pay trash pickup which is about $200/year and as soon as we moved here from Sterling Heights our water bill went through the roof, even though we used more water in SH.
 
camaromann said:
... I don’t know how or why anyone lives in Oakland county ...
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Because we want to live near/among those who can't.

I was chatting about this recently with a nearby friend (Bloomfield Hills) - his property taxes are $30K/year - he agreed that it's a bargain for what he gets given the cost of private schools (four kids).

4Gas$ said:
Oh my! My property taxes are $2,000 a year! ... Monroe County ...
Click to expand...
You get what you pay for.
 
mdhmi said:
You get what you pay for.
Click to expand...


This is true. I don't like paying for a bunch of city services
I don't need or want.

And when I want to enjoy a nice city park or other entertainment,
I visit other high rent areas :-}
 
mdhmi said:
Because we want to live near/among those who can't.

I was chatting about this recently with a nearby friend (Bloomfield Hills) - his property taxes are $30K/year - he agreed that it's a bargain for what he gets given the cost of private schools (four kids).


You get what you pay for.
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I can absolutely afford to live there lol. Also if one couldn’t afford to own a home there is always all the apartments for the “poors” to rent and live among you. I also pay out of pocket for private school for my kids. Lastly if it was up to me property tax would disappear. I would like to pay for none of it.
 
Oh I'm with you there - I'm just saying why taxes are what they are.
If it were up to me public schools would cost $20-30K/year per kid to discourage needless procreation.
 
DeFormula said:
Yeah forgot to mention larger house and 4x larger lot in Rochester Hills. But we have to pay trash pickup which is about $200/year and as soon as we moved here from Sterling Heights our water bill went through the roof, even though we used more water in SH.
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Example of some homes I looked at were anywhere in the range of 475k-675k. On the higher end price in northern Oxford or Ortonville taxes were 12-13k for 3500sq ft house on about .75 to 1 acre. I can go to lapeer or St. Clair, and on the high side again spend the same money and get the same home except on 10acres and pay 4-5k in property tax. When we go to South Carolina next month we are going to look at houses as well. 400-500k homes on 1-3 acres and property taxes are like $1,800 a year lol.
 
mdhmi said:
Oh I'm with you there - I'm just saying why taxes are what they are.
If it were up to me public schools would cost $20-30K/year per kid to discourage needless procreation.
Click to expand...

In a way I get jacking up taxes to a ridiculous amount to deter certain people from moving to the area. But as I pointed out the government will just say everything needs to be equal and put a policy in place and build large complexes and have affordable rent so the ghetto can come out and do whatever it is they do.

Idk about 20k a year per kid for school. But again I agree and would like to take the government out of our school system. I’ll gladly keep paying the roughly 5k a year now and I think in high school it becomes like $7,500 per kid where we are currently. But I also want my property taxes lowered to reflect that I’m paying 100% of the kids school costs outside of taxes. I think that’s fair. The needless procreation will continue for reasons I’ll get called all kinds of names for if I type/say them out loud lol. And since the needless procreation won’t ever stop and people won’t be able to afford to pay for their kids schools, but they’ll still have to go to school……. The government will just step in and subsidize the cost for them and we are right back to what we have now.
 
The horse-poo will cease as soon as Papa Gubmint stops paying people to sit at home on their keisters picking their noses.
I've chatted with people who planned their unneeded pregnancies around various government programs. It's an obscenity.
 
FYI - You guys aren't too far off. The original one room school houses
were funded when a group of parents would get together and hire a
school teacher. They would support her for teaching their children.

Can you imagine what schools would look like today if the parents
actually hired & directly paid the teachers?

We gave our boys the very best education we could, we home schooled
them. The one just graduated from EMU with his second degree.
 
4Gas$ said:
FYI - You guys aren't too far off. The original one room school houses
were funded when a group of parents would get together and hire a
school teacher. They would support her for teaching their children.

Can you imagine what schools would look like today if the parents
actually hired & directly paid the teachers?

We gave our boys the very best education we could, we home schooled
them. The one just graduated from EMU with his second degree.
Click to expand...

In Wayne County, we pay a millage for "Special Education" That runs about $1000 per house in my neighborhood. You could probably hire a teacher for every special needs kid in my neighborhood if we kept that money locally instead of just dumping it into the Wayne County property tax sink-hole. I am not talking about kids with ADHD here, I am talking kids that need a much higher level of care.

Imagine how badly the teachers union would freak out if something like this were allowed to happen. Oh wait, it already has with vouchers, and they are freaking out like crazy.

-Geoff
 
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