Find Small House in Katy Texas

Search for Low Priced Homes in Katy Area - West Houston

A small lower priced home may mean you will pay lower taxes & insurance, lower utilities and spend less on maintenance. If you are a first time home buyer you will probably need to buy a lot of items you never owned before. Things like lawn mowers, an edger, water hoses, tools to maintain and repair things inside and outside your new home. You will probably need to buy window coverings and maybe even your first washer and dryer. Many homes do not come with a refrigerator, so you can see there will be many new expenses over the cost of buying the home. Don't over extend yourself by buying more home than you can afford. There are lots of low cost homes under $100,000 in Katy, Tx and west Houston, many are under 5 years old.

I have lived in Katy area for 20 years and builders are constantly building new homes in the area. Many of these homes get foreclosed on either because the owners bought more than they could afford or they lost their job and couldn't make the payments. They find themselves unable to sell the homes for top dollar because there are so many new homes on the market. They find they owe more on the home than it can be sold for. This gives first time buyers a great opportunity to buy homes at below market cost. Go to HAR.com and search for homes in the 77449 zip code. Remember that the listing price is just the ASKING price. It is a buyers market and you can bid lower than the asking price. Your real estate agent may neglect to tell you that. A good indication you may need to find another agent.

You can also search by subdivision. Cypress Meadow is a quiet subdivision located at Fry and Clay Rd. Close to everything but away from the noise and traffic of Fry Rd. Most of the homes here were built in the early 80's so the prices are lower than newer homes. Bear Creek Meadows subdivision has many homes in the 90,000 range and many of the homes are only a couple years old and some have been foreclosed on. Lakeville, Windsong and Westlake are some other nice neighborhoods you may want to consider.

Cypress Meadow and Westlake are very close to Cullen Park which has a paved trail that runs through the woods all the way from Barker Cypress to Hwy 6. It's a great place to ride bikes, walk, roller blade or even have a picnic.

Important Tax Rate - Homestead Exemption Information - Katy School District Has Higher Tax Rates

One big advantage of the older neighborhoods is that you have trees and shade. The new neighborhoods usually have no shade and the MUD taxes are usually higher. MUD taxes go down as neighborhoods age. Cypress Meadows is in the Cy-Fair School District, Westlake is in the Katy School District so there is a big difference in the tax rate. You will need to go to HCAD to look up the taxes on the particular house you are interested in. When you get to the HCAD web site just click on the tab that says address.

If you live in your house you qualify for what is called a Residential Homestead Exemption. You must be loving in the house on Jan 1st to qualify for that year. So if you buy a house on Jan 2nd you won't qualify until the next year. Harris County takes 20% off the value of your house if you have a Homestead Exemption. That means if you have a $100,000 house you only pay taxes on $80,000.00. The tax rate for Cy-fair School District is 1.654% For a homestead exemption they take off 20% AND $15,000.00 so for a house valued at $100,000 you would pay tax on $65,000.00 which comes to $1075.10 Compare that to the Katy School District which has a higher tax rate of 1.815%. They only give you the $15,000.00 exemption, they don't take off the additional 20%. So for the same $100,000 house you would pay tax on $85,000.00 which comes to $1542.75 in school taxes. MUD taxes rarely have any exemption and rates vary greatly by subdivision, normally the older the subdivision the lower the MUD taxes. MUD stands for Municipal Utility District, they are the ones who provide the subdivision with water.

Think about shopping on the Internet when you are ready to buy the new things you need for your home. You can often avoid paying sales tax when shopping online and places like Amazon often offer free shipping. No tax, no shipping, no gas or time spent at local stores, can add up to big savings if you need to purchase many new items for your new home.