The Sneaky Costs of Living in Boise Idaho

You're moving to the Boise area and you want to know what the real cost of living in the Boise area actually are like utilities, water, power, gas, internet, HOA fees, salons, landscaping, ammo. We're covering all that right here.

Mortgages

We're going to hit mortgages because that's obviously going to be the number one driver of most people's costs. We have Ada County and Canyon County and there's multiple cities within those counties.

Ada County is primarily made up of Boise, Eagle, Meridian, Kuna, and Star. And right now the median price for homes in Ada County is $600,000. Depending on where you're looking to live in Ada County, of course this is going to vary quite widely.

In Boise, you're really looking at a median price of about $575,000. In Eagle, you're looking at a $1 million. That's going to certainly drive that median price overall up being with Eagle and Star also is right around $800,000 as well.

Star, is kind of “Eagle light” right now is certainly growing and it's going to kind of become the next Eagle as they kind of merged together. Meridian, you're looking at right around $600,000 for median price. Kuna's similar as well.

Depending on what you're looking for, that's going to be the kind of the price point. For a $600,000 mortgage based on today's interest rates, which right now, and I'm filming this interest rates are certainly on the rise. They are nowhere near the 3% that we were at just a couple months ago. We're right around 6% and likely going to be climbing a bit beyond that as well.

At a 6% interest rate with 20% down, you're looking at about a $3,500 down payment. Of course you can run these calculations yourself on my website very, very quickly, just check it out and you can see what specifically that will buy you depending on the type of home that you're looking for.

What does that really going to buy you? Well, $600,000 home in Meridian, you're probably going to get a 3 bedroom home. If you're looking for more of a 4 bedroom, you are going to find some pockets where you can get it for $600,000 certainly but generally if you're looking for 4, maybe 5 bedrooms are going tobe pushing more the $700,000 range.

Again, in Eagle median price is a $1 million depending on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a mid-century home, then you're probably going to be paying less because those are older. If they haven't been updated, you're going to be looking certainly more than the $500,000-$600,000 range. If they've been updated; $700,000.

If you're looking for a brand new, modern luxury home on waterfront, and you're looking certainly in the $1 to $3 million range. 

Canyon County, which Nampa, Caldwell and Middleton, the median price is a little bit lower, right around $575,000. And you're going to get a lot more affordability and all your money is going to go a lot further out in Nampa and Caldwell.

There are some really, really awesome products out there like the RV garages. You're going to find these much more significantly in Caldwell, the little bit of Nampa, and also back in star going to find these RV bays as well. And in fact, in Star, they actually have double RV base. Those are super cool. You're going to be looking at million plus dollar homes for those in Star.In Nampa and Caldwell, for those types of homes, you're going to be looking for homes probably in the $700,000 range to get these RV bays.

Utility Costs of Living in Boise Idaho

Utilities

That's kind of the number one thing that most people look at when they're moving to Idaho because they're super excited about how much less expensive it is, especially compared to California.

I moved from San Diego, which has the most expensive, the most profitable utility in the nation for Sempra Energy/ SDG&E. And it's significantly cheaper here in Idaho, thanks to all the hydropower that we have here.

You're going to be really, really pleasantly surprised depending on the time of season and at how much AC you're running during the summertime or gas in the winter time, that's going to be the widest variable. You're going to be paying anywhere from about $25 for electricity in the winter time all the way up to about $200, maybe $225 in the summertime if you're running your AC all the time, it does get quite warm here in the summer so you probably will be running your AC quite a bit, but that is really not bad at all.

In California, you for the same, if you're running your AC all the time in the summertime, oh my goodness. You're paying $500 easy if not more. Sometimes up to $800 in California. A significant savings there in general, your average payment's going to be right around $50 for electricity, kind of averaged out throughout the course of the year.

Then you've got gas. That's also going to be a bit of a range, depending on the time of year. Winter time, you're going to be paying more. Of course, summertime virtually nothing. In the winter time, you're going to be looking at $50-$75 for gas. Down to $10 or so in the summertime so a lot, lot cheaper.

And for water also significantly cheaper as well. Again in San Diego, California, you're looking at a $100-$200 plus a month, if you're not watering outside. Here in Idaho, you're looking more at around $25-$50 a month to pay for your water bill.

Now, if you have a lot of exterior landscaping, the big thing to take a look at is your HOA. Well time into HOA is here in just a second, but some HOAs do actually cover your exterior water. And that's a big, big factor. You certainly want to check that out because a lot of HOA do require that you maintain and water your grass.

And that can be a significant amount of water. It can cost you several hundred bucks a month. Make sure that your HOA has water included for exterior landscaping only. You're going to be required to pay for the indoors, of course, but that'll save you a lot of money.

Let's take a look real quick at HOAs. Generally speaking, HOA generally get a bad rap, but in Idaho they're actually really fantastic. That's what provides your walking trails, your green spaces, your parks pools that are absolutely fantastic and super, super desirable for so many of the communities here in Idaho.

They're really do a great job and people were actually really liked them in general. And they're really, really cheap. HOA is all things considered, especially compared to California. In California, you're looking at $300-$600 a month. Here, you're looking at about $300-$600 per year. That's right! Per year. I couldn't believe it either when I was moving here.

And usually the kind of the higher end of that, the $600 per year, you're looking at having water included as part of the landscaping. If it's cheaper, probably like $300, then it's probably not going to be included, but that's something that's super important and it helps keep the neighborhood super clean and makes sure your neighbors don't paint their house some crazy color. HOA again, will be $300-$600 per year. Didn't make a mistake on that!

Let's take a look at gas prices right now here. Of course, gas prices are on the rise.

Big time, hopefully soon with policy changes, maybe a new administration, maybe prices will go down. But of course, right now they're hovering right around $5.25 per gallon, still way cheaper than California but certainly not anywhere near the sub $2 that we were at just a year or two ago. Those are certainly on the rise. Hopefully those will stabilize out.

Some of the Hidden Costs that You Need to Know

And for this, this is where I dove into the Facebook group to get a little bit more detail on what others are concerned about and what they found is more expensive. And what's nice surprises. So I'm just going to read some of this stuff right here, and I'm going to dive in. So here we go.

Grocery Bills - What was a little bit surprising was the grocery bills. Food and grocery and eating out actually is not that different from California. It's pretty similar. 

The cost of living here, if on the index level at 100 being the actual index, we're at a cost of living in Idaho, 1.3, about 30% higher than the overall cost of living in the entire United States. Now compared to California, where it's really about a two X to three X. So it's a lot, lot cheaper.

That being said, groceries and eating out is fairly, fairly similar. A lot of that savings comes in your housing prices that we talked about earlier.

Car Registration - A pleasant surprise for a lot of people. In California, I have a new truck that I had registered there for $800. Here, $150 bucks for two years. So $75, doesn't matter what kind of vehicle you have; $150 for two years.

Taxes - certainly a lot cheaper here. This is a quote from someone moving from California to Idaho. They got an automatic pay raise of $12,000 simply moving here because of the difference in income taxes. That's absolutely fantastic.

Private schools - a lot cheaper, about 40% cheaper than in California. We sent our daughter to a homeschool hybrid program and certainly was a lot cheaper as well.

Here's what's surprising for a lot of people: salons, animal services, the groomers and veterinarians, those are about as expensive, sometimes even more expensive depending on where you're coming from.

Labor is very, very short supply here in Idaho. A lot of people do not make a lot of money as a lot of the folks that are moving from out of state that are working remote, making higher incomes, but it's not that supportive of the actual folks that work here making much less money.That's why construction is so expensive and is taking so long to be able to actually build a house right now, because there's just not a lot of labor actually do this.

Property Taxes - similar to California in terms of about 1% property taxes, but your housing price course is probably going to be cheaper. But something to keep in mind is that the property taxes do get adjusted based on the value of your home.

Your assessor does an evaluation each year and adjusts the price of your home. Your property taxes will actually go up versus California where Prop 13 is in effect and your property taxes are relatively fixed.

Here's what I really love about this one. I just have to read this quote right here. And it was, "Safety, security, and sanity equals priceless". That's why so many people are moving to the Boise area because it is so, so safe. It is so peaceful here as well.

And you can't put a price tag on that.

That's honestly a lot of the comments that I was getting in this Facebook group is that kind of thing is they're just so, so happy to move to Boise, to get out of the insaneness that is other parts of the nation, specifically like California, where I moved from myself.

And that's where I moved here because I wanted to get ahead of this away from the insanity that there is. That's basically the major cost of living items to cover here today. There's certainly other costs to keep in mind. I mentioned in the beginning, ammo.

Ammo is really not that much more expensive. It's just that you're probably going to be buying a lot more of it because you can hunt. You eat very much more easily. You can go to the shooting range much more easily. You can own a lot more different types of firearms, much more easily.

You're probably going to spending more to ammo. Not that it costs more, but you're going to be buying more of it.

That's an overview of the cost of living.

Curtis Chism, Realtor
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boise@chismteam.com 
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