I would suggest that the monthly income from $250,000 @ 4% is $10,000 per year divided by 12. $833 per month.
20 Years ago I owned my home free & clear and had no House or Rent Payment . Today I pay monthly rental and Care Fees combined.
@Ken Anderson When we claim to own our home outright, it's a fallacy: failure to pay real estate taxes will soon reveal the true "owner" to be the "tax man"!
Sure enough. When I moved into this country house 10 years ago, it had been vacant for at least 6 years...likely longer. The critters were not used to having a human here, and they would stand in my yard and stare at me as though I were the intruder...and they were right. If I don't pay my taxes, I'm getting kicked out. The critters will be here for generations to come. The government has a perpetual lien on our homes (in those states that have real estate taxes.) As one of my mother's British friends was fond of saying: "You left us because of taxation without representation. Now that you have representation, how do you like it?"
Same here...plus insurance. This is the first year I applied for a reduced real estate tax rate in exchange for my promise to not develop my property and to leave it rural (I have over 50 acres.) I got a 60% discount.
When I lived outside of DC, my real estate taxes for a 600 ft² home on 1/3 acre were about $4,000/year. 100 miles south of there, my real estate taxes for a 1,300ft² home on 51 acres are under $2,000/year. Now that I've got that special use exemption, my taxes are under $800/year. I wonder what percentage of your monthly fees go to pay the county real estate taxes? You could probably go on line to see what they are in the aggregate for that facility and then do some rough math. Like it or not, none of us escapes this. Even lessees pay the government piper.
We have also been mortgage-free since 2008 or so, so we pay only taxes and insurance. Definitely less than 20 years ago.
I pay $174 p.a. real estate taxes plus $300 insurance for 3,222 ft² land and a 990 ft² apartment. Don't know what percentage of fees goes to real estate tax for I don't know what kind of fees that would include. One sum I pay is $1355 p.a. which might not include all fees, though. So based on this plus real estate taxes of $474 a year we would have a real estate tax of $39/month with the latter being 35% of monthly fees. It might rise because there's a major real estate tax reform in the pipeline since taxes payable are still based on the value ratio of 1964. Apart from that, no mortgage, no rent.
My very first house was purchased in Napa, California in 1956 for $13,500. I just checked on line and the house is on the market for $654,000.
We first bought a .8 acre lot for $3500 about a mile from town. After a few months, we hired a contractor to build a typical 3 bdrm, 1.5 bath with half basement for $19,500, and that was 1971. We lived there for 9 yr. and sold for $53,000.
Bought my house outside of DC for $55,000 in 1979. The house has been replaced. The value of land+property is $1,000,000.