Relocating to Long Island 1370

Where would you be working? That makes all the difference. Distance doesn't mean time. Some roads have less traffic or have faster trains and therefore are faster to travel. Being from LA, you should know that one, no? Most folks who worked Downtown (financial district) used to live in NJ, though that's changing and eventually we should get some LIRR downtown. In 1986 my commute from NE Queens to Wall St was 1.5 hrs each way, but there have been some improvements (the #6 used to take longer to go from 33&Park downtown than the express bus took to go from Queens - those trains were total wrecks, they kept konking out about every mile). One thing I've learned is to keep trying new routes. Sometimes the oddest reason saves you time and no chart or theory will explain it unless you try it. If you can travel by two buses (one in Manhattan and one express) and carry a laptop and celfon, you won't feel a long commute as much. The new MTA express buses are totally comfortable and I find my trip a lot more productive.

Look at mta.info and study the maps. The "commuter rail" has just gone from LIRR and MetroNorth to "MTA Rail" (not to be confused with slower "MTA Subway"). There are also ferries. I'm only half-serious but in some places you could drive your own boat to work, after all NYC is a bunch of islands (lots folks are surprised to learn this one. World Financial Center has the largest Yacht marina). Much of the outer NYC area is subject to flooding (esp this time of year); These maps

Long Island is mostly a sand bar dumped by the glaciers cutting the Hudson. It has the most expensive electric rates because the hi-v lines are above ground (they didn't bite the billion dollar bullet and submerge them after Hurricane Andrew; also they never turned on the Shoreham nuke plant) and high property taxes. Westchester is a tornado zone and also has high taxes. The day Bloomberg got elected, the GOP lost NJ, Nbuttau and Westchester because there the GOP taxes and spends like sleazy LiverHole DumbOClucks. Believe it or not, we had migration into Eastern Queens from Nbuttau when their sales tax was higher than ours. But in NYC you pay income tax to the city to compensate for a much lower property tax. There are sections of Queens, Bronx and Staten Island that look and feel totally suburban (just look for the ones represented by GOP!). The other stupid thing about LI and Westchester is we don't have great universities (NJ CT, do) in the suburbs like Stanford. Folks with college-age kids like Rutgers-Princeton-BellLab zone, which is were Thomas Edison has the original Menlo Park. The only brainy place on LI is cshl.org. The rest is all meatheads who like to bang their heads on construction jobs.

And house prices are too high. I figure we've overshot by two thirds and are going to undershoot as much. I wouldn't buy in this market. I'd rent and wait five years and pay four times less. A lot of clbuttmates who bought condos in the late 1980s got so burned they still haven't been able to move up to a house. The other thing is the farther out property (I saw ads for unbuilt Berkshire lots for $45k but I am too ignorant to be trusted on this one) is going to go cheaper as gas prices rise, which they will probably keep doing for about five years. I also know a senior official at Columbia.edu who commutes from Columbia (!) county (I've seen 5 acres for under $100k). At the height of the oil crisis, my HS history teacher bought a palace in the Hamptons and now gloats about it. The old IBM territory, central Hudson is an economic wasteland where bargains should abound. Find a clever way to solve your commuting problem and it may be worth it.