Choosing the Suburbs Over Brooklyn
Are would-be Brooklynites flocking to the suburbs? The cover story in yesterday’s real estate section of the Times looks at how relatively cheap home prices in the suburbs are luring New Yorkers who find they can get way more bang for their buck in parts of Westchester, Connecticut and Jersey than in the city. While…
Are would-be Brooklynites flocking to the suburbs? The cover story in yesterday’s real estate section of the Times looks at how relatively cheap home prices in the suburbs are luring New Yorkers who find they can get way more bang for their buck in parts of Westchester, Connecticut and Jersey than in the city. While the article mostly focuses on the widening price gap between Manhattan and suburban properties, it notes that some people who would’ve bought in Brooklyn are also finding the suburbs cheaper:
Ludovic and Fabienne Ledein, who live and work as jewelry designers in Dumbo, visited nearly a dozen lofts in Dumbo, Red Hook and Williamsburg looking for something to buy for less than $600,000. They needed enough space to work at home and to put up friends and relatives from Europe. But what they wanted cost more than twice what they could afford…They found their answer in Westchester County, in New Rochelle. For about $600,000, they bought 1,350 square feet in the newly renovated Knickerbocker Lofts, a converted factory downtown that was built 117 years ago.
Any readers contemplating a similar move?
Cashing Out of New York City [NY Times]
Photo by uicukie.
Water in the south is running out – Record droughts every year! Sooner or later they will all be back. They will not a choice 🙂
WHO is the New Yorker and give examples of what makes New York a magnet for anyone, legal or illegal? Help me out here.
The population of New York City is climbing. It is over 8 million. Some claim it is 8.5 million, counting the illegal immigrants. Credible forecasters predict the population will hit 9 million within 10 years.
Thus, people are arriving faster than they are leaving. The trend augurs well for real estate and a continuing building boom.
Some people want the experience of living in NYC and later realize it’s not for them, then the cash in on the invested time, which in many ways could be a win win situation financially. Others are here for good by choice or not. It’s is exactly that experience – life, culture and work – that is unmatched anywhere else in the world. One is either a true blue New Yorker or a poseur, an opportunist or a humanitarian, and a fortunate one or vice versa.
The initial topic here was the validity of the Times article on whether it makes sense to “cash out” and for more in Suburbs vs. NYC. This means people who own and want to bank some money for a bit more space. This doesn’t include people who are renting or a family of four bursting at the seams in a windowless 1.5 to 2 BR coop. The Times for whatever reason, conjures up these scenarios that are not true and not valid in many cases. There’s the school choice, property taxes, commuting, gasoline, general maintenance…..potential loss in apprection and inability to sell when you are ready. If however, you want to move out of the city for other reasons beyond just having 100K in the bank to live off the interest (what a joke) then do your thing. It’s a free country. But some of these articles are ridiculous and people should analyze a bit more critically.
As someone said above:
” ‘everyone is just leaving the northeast’
I do wish they would hurry up so property prices would drop. C’mon everybody, shoo, shoo! NYC is over. Chapel Hill is where it’s at. Go on now, shoo!”
Right on!
2:23, you wrote:
“1:49, And the inside-school problems start with “teachers” like you :)”
What are these “inside-school” problems you are referring to?
1:49
And the inside-school problems start with “teachers” like you 🙂
4:05, you wrote:
“3:34 I sure as hell hope that you no longer work in a school system, urban or otherwise. I also hope that you were not entrusted to teach children with your mindset of who is civilized and who is not. I get a strong sense that you may equate civil with color/culture but I do hope that I am wrong. Most city schools do okay despite the odds and underfunding, so though a problem clearly exists, most schools do not underperform. Also how can you blame the students for their lack of motivation but never once mention how the attitudes of staff can affect a learner. When my students don’t do well, I always ask myself what I could do differently to change the results – no matter the circumstances.”
4:05, as you know, 14% of NYC students are asian. 14% are white. Almost all the other 72% are black and hispanic. You know as well as I do that the top high schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Med/Sci at Midwood — have student bodies that are 50% asian, over 40% white and less than 10% everyone else.
I’m sure you know the graduation statistics and the college statistics. Maybe you haven’t spent time in high schools like the former John Jay in Park Slope, Brookyn.
Maybe you don’t know that the top high schools spend about 35% LESS per student than the average high school. The savings compared with the worst schools are even greater.
There are unquestionably some poor teachers. If you believe gains in student performance would result from replacing the poor teachers with good teachers, you’d have to replace about 80% of the teachers to push performance a few percentage points higher. That’s not to say that poor teachers account for 80% of educators. But it is obvious that lifting “minority” performance into parity with white and asian performance would require replacing about 80% of all teachers with super teachers. But even then I doubt the gap would close.
Say what you want, but hundreds of thousands of city school kids bring huge non-school problems with them to the classroom. No school can solve many of their problems.