Thanks You Long Island & I hate you Long Island (Nassau: beaches, county)

[TristansMommy]

Well.. been livnig in PA for almost a month now.

Have to say.

Don't miss the traffic.

Love the views ( I see rolling hills, farmland, open spaces)

Miss my friends..
Somewhta of the convenience of everything within a 5 mile radius...but I can get that when I go to Whitehall in the Allentown /Bethlehem area.

LOVE my big house rental for almost what my escrow was for my taxes alone on LI (my rent is only $200/more for this farmhouse!!! ).. LOVE my car insrance cut to 50% and my health insurance cut by $300 a month AND that now includes my husband being covered (as opposed to just me and my son for over $800/month in NY).

Lvoe the cheaper electric bill.. Love the cheaper gas and cheaper sales tax (and for every $100 I spend in groceries I getr 10 cents of a gallon.. I got 50 cents off a gallon just the other day.woo hoo.

Life is a lot less stressfull.. didn't know that there was so much cheaper way of life off LI. I look aruond and think..god , that house must be in the millions with all that land.. and then I see the price and it's half the price of my little Levitt cape on LI was!!! and the taxes.. C H E A P.. by more than 50% for double the land/ house!! AMAZING!!!

If I had known this.. I would have left LI years ago!

I do miss my friends though.. but they'll love coming to visit

[Jrprofess]

Originally Posted by TristansMommy

Well.. been livnig in PA for almost a month now.

Have to say.

Don't miss the traffic.

Love the views ( I see rolling hills, farmland, open spaces)

Miss my friends..
Somewhta of the convenience of everything within a 5 mile radius...but I can get that when I go to Whitehall in the Allentown /Bethlehem area.

LOVE my big house rental for almost what my escrow was for my taxes alone on LI (my rent is only $200/more for this farmhouse!!! ).. LOVE my car insrance cut to 50% and my health insurance cut by $300 a month AND that now includes my husband being covered (as opposed to just me and my son for over $800/month in NY).

Lvoe the cheaper electric bill.. Love the cheaper gas and cheaper sales tax (and for every $100 I spend in groceries I getr 10 cents of a gallon.. I got 50 cents off a gallon just the other day.woo hoo.

Life is a lot less stressfull.. didn't know that there was so much cheaper way of life off LI. I look aruond and think..god , that house must be in the millions with all that land.. and then I see the price and it's half the price of my little Levitt cape on LI was!!! and the taxes.. C H E A P.. by more than 50% for double the land/ house!! AMAZING!!!

If I had known this.. I would have left LI years ago!

I do miss my friends though.. but they'll love coming to visit

Hi Tristan,
Thanks for popping back in and updating the forum. I am always interested to hear how moves work out for others. I went to undergrad in PA and liked it very much. It sounds like you have found a nice area for your family. A couple of questions: Were you able to eventually sell your Levit house on the island? Very curious given the housing market. Also, I believe you were self-employed, but have you found the job market to be sufficient? It sounds like you are in the Allentown area. I look forward to your replies and congrats again on the move.
JRP

[TristansMommy]

Originally Posted by Jrprofess

Hi Tristan,
Thanks for popping back in and updating the forum. I am always interested to hear how moves work out for others. I went to undergrad in PA and liked it very much. It sounds like you have found a nice area for your family. A couple of questions: Were you able to eventually sell your Levit house on the island? Very curious given the housing market. Also, I believe you were self-employed, but have you found the job market to be sufficient? It sounds like you are in the Allentown area. I look forward to your replies and congrats again on the move.
JRP

Hi JRP,

I did sell my house on LI. I had to to avoid foreclosure .. I had an ARM taht reset from 6.95% to 9.95% . Bad timing pretty much locked me out of a refinance.

I did sell it though and pretty quickly. The bank that owned the mortgage did an appraisal (they were conservative I felt by about 10 - 15K..as it turned out the buyers bank appraised it 10K higher than my own)... and it was shocking. $120K less than it appraised in 2005!!!! LOl.

Well.. I adjusted the asking price to a good price slightly above the full appraised value. The showings started rolling in and my house was pretty busy. I ended up with 3 offers, all of which had to outdo each other until it reached the full appraised value (they all went to that number, one even went higher but the bank will not sell it for more than their appraiser appraised it.. and he came AFTER the other two offers had been in so I didn't give it to them). I choose one buyer (the fairest thing to do was choose the couple that had signed the sale contract first, which was required on this short sale with the submissionof the offer). It sold at full appraised value. We closed on October 20th. It was a short sale.

I had been resigned to letting go for awhile and didn't think I'd be sad. The day of the closing we were still packing up and trying to get out even after the closing. I had to return to the house and as soon as I saw it.. now NOT as the owner it hit me. .. I started crying..

BUt.. then I packed my son up in the car and took off for our new place.. and when I arrived I had forgotten how BIG the new house was and I was okay. I try not to think about it too much because I will be sad, nostalgic.. all of that... and am trying to focus on moving forward.

I left a lot of memories behind on LI.. it's where I grew up and made many memories.. ALL my memories really.. and my entire family is now gone from there and spread out..

BUt.. NOW I'm in my new place making a new set of memories for my child and with my husband.

I also look forward to being able to have our second child (not pregnant yet..but hope to be sometime next year)..because on LI my hubby wasn't comfortable and felt (as did I) that we just couldnt' afford it.

The area is nice. I go about 5 minutes and I'm at Walmart, Super Giant, Big Lots. .. McDee's, Arbys, My bank, State Farm.. etc. Big shopping .. mall shopping and good clothes shopping and places like HOme Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond.. are all about 30 minutes in Whitehall. I'm about 30 - 40 min NW of Allentown in Carbon County.. near Jim Thorpe ( I look forward to the spring/summer..there are hiking trails , white water rafting and so much more here then). I'm also about 30 mintues East of skiing at Blue Mountain.

My husband still does biz in NY. His partner is there and so that is working so far. As for me, I'm going to go to school and take Med Billing /coding so that I can either get a job or work from home.. ( I prefer to work from home self employed and will contract myself out to dr's once I complete the courses). I think it will all work out great.. I can't tell you the stress that is relieved in getting out from under those bills we had in NY.

[slynn41072]

Originally Posted by TristansMommy

Hi JRP,

I did sell my house on LI. I had to to avoid foreclosure .. I had an ARM taht reset from 6.95% to 9.95% . Bad timing pretty much locked me out of a refinance.

I did sell it though and pretty quickly. The bank that owned the mortgage did an appraisal (they were conservative I felt by about 10 - 15K..as it turned out the buyers bank appraised it 10K higher than my own)... and it was shocking. $120K less than it appraised in 2005!!!! LOl.

Well.. I adjusted the asking price to a good price slightly above the full appraised value. The showings started rolling in and my house was pretty busy. I ended up with 3 offers, all of which had to outdo each other until it reached the full appraised value (they all went to that number, one even went higher but the bank will not sell it for more than their appraiser appraised it.. and he came AFTER the other two offers had been in so I didn't give it to them). I choose one buyer (the fairest thing to do was choose the couple that had signed the sale contract first, which was required on this short sale with the submissionof the offer). It sold at full appraised value. We closed on October 20th. It was a short sale.

I had been resigned to letting go for awhile and didn't think I'd be sad. The day of the closing we were still packing up and trying to get out even after the closing. I had to return to the house and as soon as I saw it.. now NOT as the owner it hit me. .. I started crying..

BUt.. then I packed my son up in the car and took off for our new place.. and when I arrived I had forgotten how BIG the new house was and I was okay. I try not to think about it too much because I will be sad, nostalgic.. all of that... and am trying to focus on moving forward.

I left a lot of memories behind on LI.. it's where I grew up and made many memories.. ALL my memories really.. and my entire family is now gone from there and spread out..

BUt.. NOW I'm in my new place making a new set of memories for my child and with my husband.

I also look forward to being able to have our second child (not pregnant yet..but hope to be sometime next year)..because on LI my hubby wasn't comfortable and felt (as did I) that we just couldnt' afford it.

The area is nice. I go about 5 minutes and I'm at Walmart, Super Giant, Big Lots. .. McDee's, Arbys, My bank, State Farm.. etc. Big shopping .. mall shopping and good clothes shopping and places like HOme Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond.. are all about 30 minutes in Whitehall. I'm about 30 - 40 min NW of Allentown in Carbon County.. near Jim Thorpe ( I look forward to the spring/summer..there are hiking trails , white water rafting and so much more here then). I'm also about 30 mintues East of skiing at Blue Mountain.

My husband still does biz in NY. His partner is there and so that is working so far. As for me, I'm going to go to school and take Med Billing /coding so that I can either get a job or work from home.. ( I prefer to work from home self employed and will contract myself out to dr's once I complete the courses). I think it will all work out great.. I can't tell you the stress that is relieved in getting out from under those bills we had in NY.

I am so gld to read that you and your family are doing well.
Sounds like you picked a great place to move to.
Best of luck!

[nancy thereader]

Good for you. I'm happy to hear a great success story.

[lialleycat]

Originally Posted by TristansMommy

Well.. been livnig in PA for almost a month now.
....

I'm glad to hear a success story! Good for you! And good for your family, being less stressed will be so much better for your relationship with your husband and child(ren). I'm working on my own move, but I'm not self-employed so I have to find a job first. Either that or become self-employed! LOL!

[natschultz]

Originally Posted by AndreaII

The original post for this thread was a little overdone with spelling errors, etc., trying to make it look authentic. Except most fairly well-educated high school students are more fluent and better spellers than that. And if this is really a student, they need to go back to school and learn to spell and to use grammar correctly.

I thought the same thing at first, however I must tell you that such grammar is on par with what is considered acceptable today. Very sad, but very true. At Stonybrook I edited numerous papers, and the grammar and spelling was atrocious. Testing and remedial courses in reading and writing are now required of all freshmen. I had a discussion about this with one of my linguistic professors, and he admitted that when he began teaching in 1994 the college students spoke and wrote proper English, but by 2003 the poor language skills were obvious. Most professors just ignore it; it's nearly impossible to change such bad skills in one or two classes. Seriously, even my well-read journalism friend had less-than-stellar writing skills. I once had a fit when the paper I wrote for edited my article from the proper (though almost never properly used) grammar to the commonly-written improper grammar. I was so embarassed that my professors would read it and think I was a moron. The editor of the paper then had all of my future articles printed as submitted, bypassing the "copy-editors" altogether.

The worst thing though was that this guy I knew was an English major, and he wrote an article that was so beyond atrocious that it was barely intelligible at all. He claimed to have been up all night and out of it - no excuse - under worse circumstances I once wrote an analysis of Chaucer in prose and received a B. I was so mad that I almost submitted it to the English Department to prevent him from graduating, but then decided against it, since apparently nobody cares anyway. I was not an English major. In fact, in the beginning I thought my foreign language/linguistics professors were really weird, but eventually they became my favorites simply because they understood my frustration.

This is definitely my biggest problem with the public school system, and why I would NEVER subject my children to it.

[corky101]

What part are you moving to? PA is really pretty and the people are so nice. I have friends who relocated there and they love it - the wife even noticed that the teens are so nice over there (I noticed this too on a recent trip). All your high school friends will all go their own way after school and they'll be gone anyway - so it's just one year. I know it seems bad now, but when it's all said and done, you may look back and be glad that you moved. Also, with the internet, keeping in touch with friends is easy - and PA isn't that far - I'm sure you can visit from time to time.

[TheTruth08]

I actually didn't move to PA. I live in Queens to continue out my last year of High School. My mom moved to Allentown a 2-3 weeks ago. It sure is beautiful out there, but NYC metro area is my home. I'm leaving this area to go upstate for college anyway but I plan on being back.

IDK why this thread was bumped.

[NJ Chutzpah]

Originally Posted by TheTruth08

Thank you Long Island for the short 16 years of my existence you have gave me great friends, memories, and an education. But my must you take this all away from me the year of my senior year? I am currently a Junior and I am moving to Pennsylvania this spring or summer and I would be the new kid in town for my Senior year. The year where you have field trips, parties, prom, graduation and I will be experiencing this with out any of my best friends. Thank you for pricing my parents out of what I call home. Even though I think my town isnt aesthetically pleasing dosent mean you have to kick me out. Why cant you still be around the same price when my mom bought you for 175k but now your worth 400-500k? Why must you do that to us? Why must you do that to me?

Senior Year is going to suck

bro takes this from me, I went to college in PA

If you tell PA girls you live near NYC (Long Island), they will be all over you