Last time, when I started dealing with houses, I wrote an article titled "Homebuyer mortgage estimation – a simple and clear calculationNow that the house is basically settled, I made a point of recording all the expenses during this buying and selling process. I realized that my previous notes were a bit superficial, so I'm writing another detailed one to try and present the true costs to everyone.

First of all, buying and selling a house is incredibly lucrative, with fees charged at every stage. A few hundred dollars may not seem like much for a house, but over everyday life, it can feel like a lot. Especially for simple things like changing a name, charging hundreds of dollars is truly unreasonable.

Let's take a house worth 500,000 yuan as an example, buying it with a loan. If you don't take out a loan, you can simply deduct the loan-related fees.

Selling a house

The fee is 1.3% for the opposing broker and 3% for our broker. This fee can be reduced to 2% and 1% respectively, but most brokers won't go that low; around 4.5% is the average. However, large agencies, especially Redfin, are currently offering 1%, which seems quite good. Those interested can try it. If it's 6%, that's 30,000; if it's 4.5%, that's 22,500.

2. If you take out a loan, the bank will take a cut when you repay it. In my case, I was charged nearly 800 yuan in "various" processing fees for no reason.

3. Generally, when selling a house, people will repair it in order to sell it better. This varies from person to person. If the house is well maintained, it does not need much repair. But most of the time it may cost 5,000-10,000.

4. Negotiating repair costs: Because houses inevitably have some issues from use, during the home inspection, the inspector will likely ask you to fix this and that. If you refuse, they will try to negotiate the price, usually by 5,000-10,000. Of course, since it's currently a seller's market, we won't consider the price negotiation for the house itself, but a few years ago, it was common to get 10,000-20,000 off. Of course, if you spent the money mentioned in the previous point correctly, this part can be significantly reduced.

5. "Other" expenses – this is the key point. I studied this part carefully while doing the closing today, and I'll show it to you:

• Property title deed: 5 (one sheet of paper)
• Loan remittance transfer: 5 (normally international transfers are only ).
• Closing Fee: 5 (This is because a middleman acts as a contract intermediary to ensure a fair transaction).
• Congestion Relief Fee: 2.5 (VA specific)
• Grantors Tax: 5 (VA, not sure what it's for)
• HOA update file fee: 6
• Insect inspection: 5
• HOA Package: 3 (This is the package for new employees)
• Loan company processing fee: 5 (This is an unclear, unverified figure; I had no idea they added this extra amount).
• Agent Company Fee: 5 (Excessive fees applied)

So, a 0,000 house would leave approximately 5,000. That's a total of about ,000 in deductions. Of course, the bulk of the cost is still the agent fees for both parties.

Buy a house

Buying a house is significantly less expensive than selling one, since the agent's fees are covered by the buyer. The approximate costs are as follows:

1. Home inspection fee: 5

2. Underwriting Fee: 5

3. Processing fee: 5

4. Other transfer fees, tax calculation fees, etc.: 0

5. Property valuation: 0

6. Property title insurance (required for mortgage): 00

7. Closing Fee: 5

8. Various stamp duties, state taxes, and extortionate taxes: 00

The total is approximately 10,000. So, if you sell your 500,000 house and buy another, you'll lose about 50,000 to 60,000. In other words, if you bought the house for 450,000 and now sell it for 510,000, you've essentially lived there for free for several years—you break even.

As mentioned in the previous article, annual taxes and interest are approximately 20,000 yuan. Based on this calculation, it's not like living there for free; it's renting the house for 20,000 yuan per year. If you want to live there for free (truly make money), then the 450,000 yuan house would need to be sold for 530,000 yuan (17.78% increase) within one year, 550,000 yuan (11.11% increase) after two years, 570,000 yuan (8.89% increase) after three years, 590,000 yuan (7.78% increase) after four years, 610,000 yuan (7.1% increase) after five years, 630,000 yuan (6.67% increase) after six years, and 650,000 yuan (6.35% increase) after seven years…

P.S.... US house price increases are generally between 3% and 8%.

Hmm... it seems that the 5-year and 7-year fixed-rate plans have some merit, and selling the house before this period is the most suitable option.