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.
WOW! The thread that launched a thousand ships!
THANKS FOR THE CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC!
Look at the numbers of postings over a holiday!
Didn’t think it possible!
AND THEN right around the change of the year we got posters:
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Pig-in-a-blanket anyone? Happy New Year! Yes, I’m a loser, I’m on brownstoner right after midnight.
Posted by: guest at January 1, 2008 12:27 AM
actually UNC and Duke University are world recognition.
Posted by: guest at January 1, 2008 12:31 AM
That’s true, 12:31, but people on this blog will deny it ad nauseum, all because it’s not NY. Staten Island is deemed more cultural to them than Chapel Hill–silly, really silly, and ignorant. I take it most of them have not been to or lived in Staten Island.
Posted by: guest at January 1, 2008 12:50 AM
Staten Island is where all of my garbage goes.
Posted by: guest at January 1, 2008 1:01 AM
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At 1-something in the AM of 1/01/08, some one wrote an essay after the poster at 1:01AM.
Go figure…
New York Times just reported an hour ago that oil hit $100 a barrel for the first time ever, and predicts by this time next year, gasoline could hit $4 a gallon.
Do you REALLY think people will be flocking to the burbs once that happens??
“As the price differences between suburbs and city widen in New York area – more and more people will choose the suburbs”
Wait….So will they widen only from New York City prices increasing? Or will it also be the continued decline of home prices in the suburbs?
Either way, I think I’ll take the city.
as gas prices continue to climb and the green revolution takes shape, i think you are dead wrong, 1:13.
just like people will pay $4 for starbucks instead of $1.20 for deli coffee, the same can be said for city living over a life in the burbs.
not necessarily that you get what you pay for, but you are buying a brand when you live in new york city.
say you live here at any party outide of nyc and everyone wants to be your friend.
not the case when i was a suburban guy. after i said the suburb i lived in, the next question was “how’s the weather”
As the price differences between suburbs and city widen in New York area – more and more people will choose the suburbs –
12:47….i appreciate the survey but a summer house is not at all what the article was referencing.
it is talking about moving to the burbs.
which fewer and fewer people are actually doing.
so the article really doesn’t have much truth to it. more people than ever are choosing city life over the suburbs.
I wouldn’t mind a beach house.
No interest in a rural house though.
I’m quite fine without either, however.
Park Slope satisfies me more than any place I’ve ever lived.
Informal survey. Can I ask that for all of us who love living in the City, who would not want to have that country house to flee those teeming crowds when you just need some space? Isn’t it the aspiration for most of us to be able to live in the neighborhood you choose but then be able to leave it and go to some place where its completly different but still be in your home too?
12:29–I (the Croton resident) totally agree–that’s why we didn’t move to Montcalir or any other urban burb. Croton and the surrounding areas has tremendous natural beauty and literally thousands of miles of nature preserves and hiking trails. Not to mention the Hudson River and the nearby Hudson Highlands. Our feeling was that if we were going to leave Brooklyn we wanted to get the benefit of leaving it. I couldn’t imagine living in one of those dense, crowded, traffic-ridden burbs either–why leave the city if you aren’t going to get any benefit other than a bigger house?
I checked and the New York Sports Club has been in the center of Croton for over 9 years. Again, not sure how 10:51’s sister missed it.