There is no single answer, because the monthly cost of a home is not one bill. It is a loan payment, a property tax bill, an insurance premium, utility and sewer accounts, and whatever the building needs that month. Each has a different authority behind it, and each is published in a different place.
The price of a house is the number everyone talks about. The number that actually shapes a household budget is the one that arrives every month for as long as you own the place, and it is made of six or seven separate bills sent by six or seven separate organizations, none of which coordinate with each other.
This article is about that number, and only that number. It is not about the down payment or the closing costs, which are covered on the mortgages and financing page and in the first-time buyer guide. It picks up the day after closing, and it is built out of what the official sources actually publish, quoted and dated, rather than out of rules of thumb.
Written by Saleh Ihmoud, REALTOR®. Missouri license #2025005964, sponsored by Elevate Realty, 16141 Swingley Ridge Rd #201, Chesterfield, MO 63017, (314) 947-3137. Illinois license #475.218785, sponsored by Elevate Illinois Realty, 6 Ginger Creek Village Drive, Suite A, Glen Carbon, IL 62034, (618) 343-5444. Licensed in the State of Missouri and the State of Illinois. Equal Housing Opportunity. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. This article is general education. It is not legal, tax, lending or insurance advice. Talk to a licensed lender about financing, a licensed insurance agent about coverage, the local assessing and collecting officials about your own tax bill, and a tax professional about tax questions.
What does it actually cost per month to own a home?
There is no single answer, because the monthly cost of a home is not one bill. It is a loan payment, a property tax bill set by the taxing districts at that specific address, an insurance premium, one or more utility accounts, a sewer or water charge, and whatever the building itself needs that month. Each of those has a different authority behind it, and each one is looked up in a different place.
One qualifier before the list, because it changes how the list appears on a bank statement. Where there is a mortgage, some of these may not arrive as separate bills, since many loans are set up with an escrow account that handles certain items through the servicer instead. Which items that covers, and how it is calculated, is a lending question governed by the loan documents, and the lender or servicer holds that answer. The costs below exist either way, and they are the costs this article is about.
What follows is where each of these numbers really lives, and who publishes it.
The bills that arrive after closing, and who sends them
It is really a short list of accounts, each with an organization behind it.
| The cost | Who sets it | Where the official number for your address lives |
|---|---|---|
| Loan principal and interest | Your lender, under your loan documents | Your own closing documents and your servicer. A licensed lender is the person who answers this |
| Property tax | The local taxing districts whose boundaries overlap at that parcel | The assessing and collecting officials for that parcel. The section below gives the official directory for each state |
| Homeowners insurance | Your insurer, under the policy you sign | A licensed insurance agent, and your own policy declarations page |
| Electricity and gas | The utility serving that address | The utility, plus published state averages from the U.S. Energy Information Administration |
| Sewer, and water where it is billed separately | The district or municipal provider serving that address | The provider's own published rate schedule |
| Flood insurance, where it applies | Separate from the homeowners policy, and sometimes required by a lender | The FEMA Flood Map Service Center for the address, then a licensed insurance agent and your lender |
| Maintenance and repairs | The building, its age, and its systems | No authority publishes a required amount. See the section below on what is actually measured |
| HOA or condominium assessments, where they exist | The association, under its own recorded documents | The association's declaration, budget and current assessment schedule |
Property tax: who sets it, and where the rate is published
This line is often misunderstood, and the misunderstanding is usually about who decides it. In Missouri, the assessor and the taxing districts are two different authorities doing two different jobs. The City of St. Louis Assessor states it plainly on its own property tax rates page: "Missouri law separates the Assessor's authority to value property and the districts' authority to set a tax rate." The same page adds: "The Assessor does not determine or set the tax rates charged by the political subdivisions."
That page also states the unit the rate is expressed in, which is the part that makes published rates hard to compare casually: "Property tax rates are amounts per $100 of assessed value on a piece of property."
On the Illinois side, the Illinois Department of Revenue's property tax page describes its own role this way: "The Illinois Department of Revenue does not administer property tax. It is managed by the local governments including cities, counties, and taxing districts." Its direction to owners is equally direct: "If you are a taxpayer and would like more information or forms, please contact your local county officials."
The offices are named differently in the two states, so here is how each one describes itself. The Illinois Department of Revenue's Publication 136, published April 2016, names the local officials this way: property tax is "administered by local officials (e.g., township assessors, Chief County Assessment Officers (CCAOs), local Boards of Review (BORs), county collectors)." Madison County, one of the two large Metro East counties, publishes the sequence for its own county on its County Clerk tax and real estate page: "Property valuations are certified to the County Clerk by the Chief County Assessment Officer." Then "The County Clerk tax staff calculates the tax rate (set within statutory limits by the local board for each taxing district) to each property's valuation set by the Township Assessor." And finally, "This information is sent to the County Treasurer whose office prepares and mails each tax bill."
Note how many offices are in that sequence. In Madison County, by its own description, the township assessor values, the Chief County Assessment Officer certifies, the County Clerk calculates and the County Treasurer bills. That is Madison County's published arrangement. Other Illinois counties publish their own, and they are not all identical.
So the rate that applies to a specific house is a stack of separate district rates that happen to overlap at that parcel. Since school, fire, library and other districts each have their own boundaries, two nearby properties do not automatically carry the same total. That is why this article points to the official lookup rather than printing a number.
| State | Official source | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Missouri | Missouri State Tax Commission directories | Statewide directories of county Assessors, County Clerks and County Collectors, which is the route to the office that holds your parcel |
| Missouri, City of St. Louis | City of St. Louis Property Tax Inquiry | A lookup by property number, owner name or address for parcels inside the city |
| Missouri, rate mechanics | City of St. Louis Assessor, Property Tax Rates | The assessor's own explanation of what a rate is, what it is expressed in, and who sets it |
| Illinois | Illinois Department of Revenue, Property Tax | The department's own statement that it does not administer property tax, and its instruction to contact county officials |
| Illinois, county by county | Illinois Department of Revenue, County Contact Information | The department's own list of every Illinois county with its lookup, including Madison and St. Clair. This is the page its instruction to contact your county officials points at |
| Illinois, Madison County | Madison County Clerk, Tax and Real Estate | That county's own description of which office values, which certifies, which calculates the rate and which mails the bill. Other counties publish their own |
One pattern is common to both of the arrangements described above: valuing a property and billing for it are separate jobs held by separate offices.
The sewer bill is its own line item here, and it is published
In much of the St. Louis area, wastewater is not bundled into a city utility bill. It is billed by the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, which publishes its residential rate schedule openly. MSD describes its own footprint this way: "Originally serving the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County east of I-270, MSD annexed most of the remainder of St. Louis County in 1977." And: "Today, MSD Project Clear serves approximately 1.3 million people over 520 square miles and five major watersheds in the land bordered by Highway 109 on the west to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramac Rivers."
The rates below are transcribed from MSD's own residential rate page for customers with and without water meters, under that page's own headings. Note that the district publishes residential rates on that page specifically, not on the top level rate information page, which carries a separate commercial and industrial table.
| MSD heading | Unit of measurement | Rate as published |
|---|---|---|
| Rates for Metered Residential Customers | Base Charge | $34.85 per month |
| Rates for Metered Residential Customers | Metered Volume | $7.15 per hundred cubic feet (CCF) |
| Rates for Unmetered Residential Customers | Base charge | $34.85 per month |
| Rates for Unmetered Residential Customers | Rooms | $3.64 each per month |
| Rates for Unmetered Residential Customers | Water Closets | $13.58 each per month |
| Rates for Unmetered Residential Customers | Baths/Showers | $11.63 each per month |
Three details from the same source that make those figures readable. On what a CCF is, MSD states: "A CCF is equal to about 750 gallons of water, which is enough water to run a dishwasher about 50 times." On when the number changes, the district's rate information page states: "You will notice a change in the wastewater portion of your MSD bill effective on July 1 of each year. The new rate will be reflected on the bill you receive in August."
And on which water gets counted, which matters in a metro full of lawns. MSD states: "Bills are based on your water usage during the Winter Quarter (WQ), as measured in cubic feet of water (listed on your bill as CCF)." The district explains why on the same page: "This water meter reading most closely reflects the amount of water used inside the house and is not affected by activities such as watering your lawn, washing a car, or filling a swimming pool." And it adds: "MSD does not charge for water that is not returned to the sewer system." So for a metered home in the district, the volume portion of a full year of sewer bills is set by what happens indoors during one winter quarter.
The unmetered schedule is the less familiar of the two. A house without a water meter is billed partly on how many rooms and fixtures it has, which means the count of rooms, toilets and showers is part of what sets the monthly figure. The rate table above is what MSD publishes for that basis.
Addresses in the Metro East sit outside this district, so none of the figures above apply there, and there is no single schedule to put in their place. Wastewater on that side of the river is handled address by address. Some properties are on a public system and some are not: the St. Clair County Health Department runs a Private Sewage Disposal Program, which it describes as regulating "methods of sewage disposal from facilities and homes that are not served by public sewer systems." Which of those a specific address falls under, and what it is billed or what it costs to maintain, is a question for that municipality or that county rather than something this article can put a number on.
MSD also appears on the property tax bill
This is where the tidy picture of one bill per organization stops holding.
The wastewater charge above is not the whole of what MSD collects from a property in its district. The district also levies stormwater taxes, and it states that customers in its existing OMCI taxing subdistricts "pay 0.0¢ to 10.0¢ per $100 Assessed Valuation on annual property tax bills." The same page lists several other stormwater levies and notes that "Final rates will be set no later than October 1 each year," so the figures posted there at any moment may not be the ones finally set for that year.
Two things to carry out of that. The sewer utility and the property tax bill are not entirely separate places to look in this district. And the stormwater portion is a tax question, so the amount on a specific parcel is a question for MSD and for the collector rather than something to estimate. MSD publishes an address level map on that same page for anyone who wants to see what applies to a specific location.
Flood damage is usually not covered by a homeowners policy
This is a line that often gets left out of a household budget, and the reason is usually an assumption that the homeowners policy already covers it.
The National Flood Insurance Program states it plainly on its own site: "Most homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage." And: "Only flood insurance covers the cost of rebuilding after a flood." The program also notes that "Many property owners, particularly those in high-risk flood areas, may be required to have flood insurance."
Flood risk here is not uniform across the metro. It is mapped at the address level, and the mapping is public. The FEMA Flood Map Service Center takes an "address, a place, or longitude/latitude coordinates" and is described on its own page this way: "Use the MSC to find your official flood map, access a range of other flood hazard products, and take advantage of tools for better understanding flood risk." Some parcels are mapped in a high risk area and some are not, and the mapping is done at the address level rather than by neighbourhood.
This article does not say whether a policy is needed, what one costs, or what any lender requires. Those are insurance and lending questions and they sit with a licensed insurance agent and with the lender. What can be said is where each answer is published or held. The mapping is FEMA's, at the link above. Pricing and coverage sit with a licensed insurance agent. Loan requirements sit with the lender.
Electricity, in the federal government's own published figures
Electricity is the utility with the cleanest published comparison, because the U.S. Energy Information Administration collects it from the utilities themselves and publishes it state by state. The figures below are from EIA Table 5.a, "2024 Average Monthly Bill- Residential", released October 7, 2025, covering data for 2024, and drawn from forms EIA-861 schedules 4A-D, EIA-861S and EIA-861U.
| State | Number of customers | Average monthly consumption (kWh) | Average price (cents/kWh) | Average monthly bill |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri | 2,933,914 | 1,001 | 12.91 | $129.18 |
| Illinois | 5,392,477 | 693 | 15.87 | $109.99 |
That table reports two different things side by side, a price per kilowatt hour and an amount consumed, and both of them move a bill. A statewide average also flattens the thing that actually drives a bill, which is the specific house: its insulation, its windows, its furnace, and whether it heats with gas or electricity. Natural gas, where a home uses it, is a separate account with a separate provider and a separate bill.
Maintenance and repairs: what is actually measured, and what is not
Popular advice puts a percentage on this. You have probably seen one percent of the purchase price a year, or a dollar per square foot. Those circulate as conventions and this article could not trace either one to a publishing authority. What follows instead is a figure that is measured and published.
What is actually measured is household spending. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks it in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, broken out by housing tenure. The series titled "Expenditures: Maintenance, Repairs, Insurance, Other Expenses for Owned Dwelling by Housing Tenure: Homeowner with Mortgage" reports $4,704 for 2024, $3,835 for 2023 and $4,050 for 2022. The figures are annual, in U.S. dollars, not seasonally adjusted. Note the shape of that: 2023 was a dip rather than a step down a trend, which is a reason to treat any single year of a survey series carefully.
Two cautions about that number, and they matter more than the number itself. First, read the series title: it bundles maintenance, repairs, insurance and other expenses together, so it is not a maintenance figure on its own and should not be quoted as one. Second, it is a national average across homeowners with a mortgage, not a St. Louis figure and not a prediction for any particular house. It is deliberately not divided by twelve here. A yearly figure that bundles insurance with repairs does not become a monthly maintenance budget by arithmetic, and the number that would come out of that division is the exact thing the sentence above says it must not be quoted as.
What can be said plainly is that maintenance is the least predictable line on the list, that it arrives in lumps rather than monthly installments, and that the age and condition of the specific systems in the specific house is what governs it. A home inspection report is the document that describes those systems.
Insurance: what the regulators are reporting
Selling homeowners insurance is licensed work, and a quote for a specific house comes from a licensed insurance agent looking at that house. What can be said generally is what the regulators themselves publish about the direction of the market.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners released a national analysis of homeowners insurance market trends on August 5, 2026, covering data from 2018 to 2024. Its finding, quoted from the release: "Average premium per policy increased across every NAIC region since 2018, with inflation-adjusted increases ranging from 18.3% to 43.3%, to the effect of average premium increases of 2.4% to 5.3% per year."
What that finding describes is a market that has moved, in one direction, across every region the NAIC measures, over a seven year window. A premium quoted at closing describes that year rather than every year after it. What any of that means for a specific policy is a question for a licensed insurance agent.
The parts that belong to another licensed professional
Three of the biggest inputs to a monthly payment sit outside what a real estate license covers, and this article does not treat them as if they did not.
| The cost | Why a real estate article is not the place for it | Who answers it |
|---|---|---|
| Principal, interest, mortgage insurance and how an escrow account collects taxes and insurance | These are lending questions governed by your loan documents and federal lending rules | A licensed lender or your loan servicer |
| What your specific tax bill will be, and any exemption or credit you might qualify for | These are tax questions decided by the assessor, the collector and tax law | Your county assessor and collector, and a tax professional |
| What a policy costs, what it covers, and what a deductible does | These are insurance questions governed by the policy and by state insurance regulation | A licensed insurance agent |
Each of those professionals can produce a real number for a real situation, usually in a single conversation.
What the picture looks like, depending on where you are
Circumstances change which of these lines carries the most weight. The table below is a map of the terrain, not a set of instructions. It names what tends to dominate in each case and what the open question tends to be. It does not answer that question, because the answer depends on facts a web page does not have.
| If your situation looks like this | The lines that tend to dominate | Where the open question usually sits |
|---|---|---|
| You are moving from renting to owning | The costs a lease used to absorb: sewer, water, trash, and every repair | Which utilities a lease already included, which is the part a rent to mortgage comparison often leaves out |
| You are looking at an older home in the City or in St. Louis County | Maintenance, systems near the end of their life, and the MSD schedule including the unmetered basis | The age and condition of the roof, furnace and service lines, which an inspection report describes |
| You are shopping in the Illinois Metro East | The wastewater arrangement at that specific address, the offices listed on that county's own pages, and the utility serving it | Which township and which county the parcel sits in, since that determines whose published pages apply |
| You are considering a condominium or a home in an association | The monthly assessment, and what the association's budget says it covers and does not | What the association's own recorded documents and current budget say, including any assessment beyond the regular one |
| You are stretching to reach a price | All of the above at once, since the variable lines are the ones with no ceiling | How many of these numbers are actual quotes and how many are still estimates |
One disclosure, so it can be weighed alongside everything above. I am a real estate agent. An article about the full cost of ownership is written by someone whose business depends on people buying and selling homes. Every source in this article is linked and public, which means none of it rests on my say so.
Here is the limit of a page like this one, stated plainly. Every row in that last table interacts with the others, and the combinations depend on a household's income, its loan, the specific parcel and the specific building. An article can set out what the lines are and where each official number is published. It cannot produce anyone's number, and it is not the place where a decision gets made.
That part takes a conversation, and that is a different thing from an article. In a consultation I hear someone's actual circumstances first, ask the questions a web page cannot ask, and where the answer needs my broker I go and ask my broker. Only then is there anything worth calling a recommendation, and it is a recommendation for that person rather than for a reader. The tax, lending and insurance pieces stay with the professionals licensed for them throughout. If you want to work through what a particular house would cost to hold, start a conversation with me. No obligation and no pressure.
More on the money side of buying is on the mortgages and financing page. The rest of the practical-life material sits under Life Navigation. If you are earlier in the process, the first-time home buyer's guide to buying in St. Louis covers what happens before closing, and the home buying process lays out the full sequence.
Sources and dates. Every source named here is linked where it is quoted. MSD residential rates, the winter quarter basis, the stormwater tax page and the service area were read on msdprojectclear.org on September 9 and 10, 2026. MSD states the wastewater portion of the bill changes effective July 1 each year, which is why the figures above carry the date they were read. Electricity figures are EIA Table 5.a, 2024 Average Monthly Bill Residential, released October 7, 2025, covering 2024. The household expenditure figures are the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey series for maintenance, repairs, insurance and other expenses for an owned dwelling, homeowner with mortgage, accessed via FRED on September 9, 2026, most recent observation 2024. The insurance market finding is from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners release of August 5, 2026, covering 2018 to 2024. Flood statements are quoted from floodsmart.gov, the National Flood Insurance Program site, and from the FEMA Flood Map Service Center, both read September 10, 2026. Property tax material is quoted from the City of St. Louis Assessor, the Missouri State Tax Commission, the Illinois Department of Revenue including its Publication 136 of April 2016, and the Madison County Clerk, read September 9 and 10, 2026. The private sewage description is from the St. Clair County Health Department, read September 10, 2026. MSD renders the Meramec as Meramac on its own page and the quotation above preserves the district wording. Rates, tax levies, premiums and flood maps all change over time, and the linked sources are the current authority on each.
Frequently asked questions
What monthly costs come with owning a home besides the mortgage payment?
Property tax, homeowners insurance, electricity, natural gas where the home uses it, water and sewer, flood insurance where it applies, maintenance and repairs, and an association assessment where one exists. Each is set by a different organization and published in a different place, which is why a single monthly figure cannot be stated in advance. One thing that is often unexpected: where there is a mortgage, some of these may not arrive as separate bills, because many loans are set up with an escrow account that handles certain items through the servicer instead. Which items that covers and how it is calculated is a lending question governed by the loan documents, and the lender or servicer holds that answer. The costs exist either way.
How do I find out what the property taxes are on a specific house?
The figure is held by the local officials for that parcel rather than by any calculator, and the offices are named differently in the two states. In Missouri, the City of St. Louis Assessor states that Missouri law separates the Assessor's authority to value property and the districts' authority to set a tax rate, and that the Assessor does not determine or set the tax rates charged by the political subdivisions. The Missouri State Tax Commission publishes statewide directories of county Assessors, Clerks and Collectors, and the City of St. Louis runs its own property tax inquiry for parcels inside the city. In Illinois, the Department of Revenue states that it does not administer property tax, that it is managed by the local governments including cities, counties, and taxing districts, and it directs taxpayers to contact their local county officials, with a county by county contact list on its own site. Its Publication 136 names township assessors, Chief County Assessment Officers, local Boards of Review and county collectors, and Madison County publishes that the County Clerk calculates the rate against the valuation set by the Township Assessor before the County Treasurer prepares and mails each tax bill.
How much is the sewer bill in St. Louis?
The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District publishes its residential rates. As read on September 9, 2026, metered residential customers are charged a base charge of $34.85 per month plus $7.15 per hundred cubic feet of metered volume, and MSD notes that a CCF is equal to about 750 gallons of water. Unmetered residential customers are charged the same $34.85 base plus $3.64 per room per month, $13.58 per water closet per month, and $11.63 per bath or shower per month. Two things make those figures readable. MSD states that bills are based on water usage during the Winter Quarter, because that reading most closely reflects water used inside the house and is not affected by watering a lawn or filling a pool. And MSD states that the wastewater portion of the bill changes effective July 1 of each year and appears on the August bill, so the figures above are dated for that reason. Separately, MSD also levies stormwater taxes, and it states that customers in its existing OMCI taxing subdistricts pay on annual property tax bills rather than through the monthly utility bill, so MSD can appear in two places. Metro East addresses are outside this district entirely. Wastewater there is handled address by address: some properties are on a public system and some are not, and the St. Clair County Health Department runs a program for homes not served by public sewer. Which one applies to a specific address is published by that municipality or county.
How much should I budget for home maintenance every month?
There is no published standard, and the familiar conventions such as one percent of the purchase price a year could not be traced to any publishing authority. What is measured is household spending. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey series for maintenance, repairs, insurance and other expenses for an owned dwelling, for homeowners with a mortgage, reports $4,704 for 2024, $3,835 for 2023 and $4,050 for 2022. Two cautions. The series bundles insurance in with maintenance and repairs, so it is not a maintenance figure and does not become one by dividing it by twelve. And it is a national annual average, not a St. Louis figure and not a forecast for any particular house. What governs it is the age and condition of the specific systems in the specific home, which is what a home inspection report describes.
Does homeowners insurance cover flood damage?
Generally not, and it is a common assumption in a metro built around three rivers. The National Flood Insurance Program states on its own site that most homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage, that only flood insurance covers the cost of rebuilding after a flood, and that many property owners, particularly those in high-risk flood areas, may be required to have flood insurance. Flood risk here is mapped at the address level and the mapping is public: the FEMA Flood Map Service Center is where an address is looked up. Whether a policy is needed, what one costs and whether a lender requires one are insurance and lending questions, and those answers sit with a licensed insurance agent and with the lender rather than with an article.