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.
Sold my Fort Greene Brownstone a few years ago at more than 300% profit. Purchased a 5500sq.ft home in a gated community in Freehold N.J. for the price of a small studio in Park slope. Most of my neighbors are from both brooklyn and Staten Island and they never looked back. We never realized how traumatized our children were until they came home from school worried that there were “NO” metal detectors. I agree with 12:52, it was the best decision we ever made. Our friends and families are still flipping out. Our children are doing great in public school and my back yard is about the size of the tennis courts in Fort Greene Park. Leaving Brooklyn was scary at first, but now I wonder what took me so long.
To live in a suburban area or urban area is clearly life style choice. Consciencious parents will ensure that their children are properly educated either way, even though both educational options have their drawbacks. Obviously, there is a demand for city living because there doesn’t seem to be a big lack of those willing and able to pay the price for homes in the popular Brooklyn neighborhoods and still pay prep school tuition. If there were no takers these homes would not sell. Yes I know that they are not selling as quickly or for quite as much but they still sell. We know that in both Long Island and NYC schools are segregated because of town/neighborhood residency requirements. The advantage in NYC is that the child of an Senegalese or Ecuadorian immigrant can get into a public middle or high school based on merit not address. In Long Island if you live in Wyandanch, you had better not try to enroll your child in a Dix Hill school.
Yes, THANK YOU to the NYC teacher who wrote in.
I was going to mention the fact that NYS OWES NYC BILLIONS…but the teacher brought that up. Thank you.
The lack of all that money is very much impacting NYC schools. A lot of people who have kids in NYC schools are in the dark about what is going on and, often it seems, place blame on entities/people who themselves are victims of this suffocation by the state (possibly a good ol’ attempt at that neo-con “underfund’em, blame’em, private’em” theft of the public gambit…?).
Anyway, we have friends in the burbs who send their kids to private school. They want their kids to get into the best colleges possible. Not that public school would not get them in…but whatever. Suffice to say, they pay high real estate taxes and very high fancy-pants private schools with all the bells and whistles, private tutors, sports and music lessons, etc., etc. along with too much keeping-up-with-the-Jones and clothing competition among the kids.
Then, as people have been mentioning: the car insurance! A 17 y.o. on your insurance?!!! NOT cheap!
If you want to live in the burbs for the sake of white flight, sense of “safety” or whatever…good luck…then you have ChemLawn come in to charge you to blast the grass with chemicals to make it grow faster (and pollute ground water) and then when it bolts up, they come back to cut it down and charge you to haul it away.
Its funny that people always mention NYC’s bad schools as a reason to buy or not buy in a community…but everyone fails to mention that NYC has 5 high schools that are ranked in the country’s top 50, not to mention that various prep schools.
Seems to me blaming nyc’s schools is a bit of a cop out when it comes to making a real estate purchase.
No way i am not moving with those uneducated Hillbillies. There is nothing to do in suburbs boring boring. Also NYC is the Greatest city in the world not just the United states. the reason prices of real estate are higher here folks is because of us being the center of the universe. If you want to leave i would make 100% complete sure before you do because this is the greates show on earth.
Thank you, public school teacher at 1:03. It’s great to hear from teachers their inside views and their passion.
Correction: I meant to say $3-4K per year in my previous post.
Benson
2.08 Hits on a point that hasn’t been taken into account in the previous posts regarding the cost differential between the city and suburbs. In the city, it is quite easy to get by with no car, or one car. In the suburbs two cars are a minimum, and I’ve noticed with my relatives that they usually have 3 or 4 cars when the kids become teenagers. This is a pretty big cost – at least $3-4K per month, I would estimate. In addition, one tends to put on more miles in the suburbs.
Benson
somebody hit a nerve 1:41. Wyandanch is the worst school system in the state. Not reaching just a fact.