Starter Houses on Long Island? (Islip, Valley Stream: real estate, property taxes, housing)

[GCGuy]

Originally Posted by KellyFG

The days of 150k homes on LI are over, but my DH & I bought our house, with waterview & private beach rights, 5 bedrooms, 3 full baths, full basement as a fixer-upper in 2004 for $260,000. We put about 25,000 in it to make it livable doing all the work ourselves. We are in Eastern Suffolk, I commute to massapequa 4x a week, my DH works in the hamptons.
We probably looked at 50 homes before finding ours but we knew a mortgage payment much higher would not work for us even though several lenders were willing to lend us almost double.
Our taxes are 6,600-I'm considering greiving them. The school district is average(our kids don't attend it) and we feel like we live in a vacation home everyday. The pace is slower here, I love the more rural feel & we think the commute is worth it.
Neither of us have high paying jobs, just average so we live accordingly.
My car is 7 years old w/130k miles, DH's truck 5 years old with 145k miles. We eat home 99% of the time, bring coffee, breakfast & lunch from home everyday(haven't set foot in a convience store since Sept 11th). We have basic cable, no flat screens, I've never eaten in the cheesecake factory, Haven't been in roosevelt field mall since the outdoor flea market was over there, we borrow books & DVDs from the library instead of buying them.
When we renovated our kitchen in 2004 we spent just under $5,000 on cabinets, flooring, counters, 2 appliances, paint, trim, all new plumbing & electric...we live modestly. My kitchen is beautiful & new & I won't being paying back a HELOC for 15 years because of all the bells & whistles that wouldn't make me a better cook
I know the first rule of real estate is location, but I think people starting out on LI have taking that too far....reaching to live in areas that are "high end", but I would not want the worst house on the best block. I prefer NOT to spend my life keeping up with Joneses. I'd rather have a great house in a really nice neighborhood & know where I stand.
Starter homes are still avaiable IF people are willing to accept the imperfections of a starter home. Unfortunately people on Long Island have an instant gratification mentality...its ok for those that earn the money to support it, but I'm tired of hearing people holding 'caramel latte vente's' while getting into their leased Infinity complaining about it!

Nice post, but may I add that this mentality (the Inifiniti, latter, etc.) is nto just on LI, and not just in the MY metro. It's not even really in just anymore. The whole damn planet is going crazy and everything in the world seems to be getting "high-end."

[momix5]

Oh my God you know Long Islanders to a tee! We tried to sell our home we were asking 349,000 for a 3 bed 2 bath split colonial, located on a cul de sac.We were more than willing to negotiate the price. We have hard wood floors, all newly refinished, two new baths, a new kitchen, however we were told by the real estate that for that price we would need solid wood cabinets and granite counters even though the appliances were all new. She said that people looking for houses did not even want to paint. which they would not have had too! Needless to say these buyers need a reality check when it comes to putting some work to maybe changing colors or hardware. I think that sellers are greedy in some cases but my house completely done was only listed 5,000 over the appraisal fee. The real estates need a reality check also, because its so easy to blame things on the market.

[ginaburns]

I lived on Long Island for 42 years. Have a husband and 3 girls. We lived out in Mt Sinai in a nice neighborhood in a nice house that was 25 years old. Moved to middle tennessee 2 1/2 years ago and we cannot believe what a rip off Long Island is. We bought a 4000 square foot home brand new for under $400k, Our taxes are under 3k and the schools blow NY away. You can eat off the streets and the county is not allowed to make money with taxes therefore our tax bill actually went down. The people are wonderful and this town has people from all over the country transplanting. My girls have a chance to buy a house when they are older because out of my initial area homes (new homes) can be bought for $100k or more. NY politicians and government have their hands into everything and the people get nothing. Good luck on Lond Island- we left our families and love to visit but you could never pay me enough to move back. We are living the good life now.

[Chella]

It's extremely hard to live on LI if you don't have the financial backing.

[momix5]

ginaburns: hi what part of Tennessee? We are hoping when we can sell to move to either South Carolina or Tennessee. Thanks.

[NYSinger]

Wow, I cannot believe how many responses this thread has launched!!

DH and I are still living on Long Island...No luck on finding another job elsewhere. It is so expensive living here!! And yes, we are living frugally in the hopes of owning our own house one day.

NYSinger

[Whome?]

Originally Posted by momix5

Oh my God you know Long Islanders to a tee! We tried to sell our home we were asking 349,000 for a 3 bed 2 bath split colonial, located on a cul de sac.We were more than willing to negotiate the price. We have hard wood floors, all newly refinished, two new baths, a new kitchen, however we were told by the real estate that for that price we would need solid wood cabinets and granite counters even though the appliances were all new. She said that people looking for houses did not even want to paint. which they would not have had too! Needless to say these buyers need a reality check when it comes to putting some work to maybe changing colors or hardware. I think that sellers are greedy in some cases but my house completely done was only listed 5,000 over the appraisal fee. The real estates need a reality check also, because its so easy to blame things on the market.

you still selling? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there (me included) who aren't as picky as this realtor...

[momix5]

Hey Who Me! Yes we are still interested in selling, if you are interested please feel free to contact me at cereardon@verizon.net. Thanks hopefully we will talk soon

[budsvtec]

My wife and I bought our house in Levittown during the summer of 2005 when the houses were still very highly priced.

We were looking at houses around $400k and found somne really disgusting homes. We couldnt believe what people were trying to sell and for what money they were asking.

I received an email from a realtor and in that email was house that had 4 bedrooms and 1 bathroom in Levittown. It was an estate sale and they were asking $359k.

After looking at 80 plus homes my wife and I looked at each other and said this place must be a dump. So we took a ride by it and saw what a great block it was on. The area was very quiet, and very family orientated.

We set up an appointment with the realtor to go check it out. It was a Levitt home. The owner passed away at the beginning of the year and the family was selling the house. They were asking $359k and we figured they wanted to start a bidding war, but the realtor said that the seller just wants to sell it and not have the house sitting on the market for months. He had grown up in the house and wanted to see it go to a good family.

Well the house was clean. The kitchen wasnt original thank god. The bathroom needed some updating. The house had all new paint and all new carpet. The upstairs was just finished but for some reason who ever did the work, they closed off the eaves. No idea why.

Anyway, the next day we brought my Father in law over to see it and he said to offer $10k over. So we did that......Well they had one open house on a sunday. We didnt go, but a lot of other people did. They got 12 offers on the house and on tuesday we got the call that we got the house. We were in shock.

Now we have been here for over a year, We totally renovated the inside of the house, did a lot of work to the back yard and front yard of the house. It is now a 3 bedroom and 1 bathroom house with a formal dining room where the master bedroom used to be.

Levittown is a great town - There are a lot of homes being sold at low prices, especially now. You could find a home in levittown starting at $300k for a house that needs a lot of work....and be in a house forr $340k thats move in condition. Thats not bad for a starter house.

The taxes are a little high in Levittown, but the star takes off between $1300 and $1400 a year and you can also grieve your taxes.

There are free pools all over levittown that are for all Levittown residents. Plenty of shopping. I have a stop in shop and a waldbaums and a Pathmark all within 5 minutes of my house.

For People that are commuting there is Wantagh train station, Bethpage Train station, Hicksville Train station, all within 10 minutes of Levittown and Bellmore train station, within 15 minutes of Levittown.

We have survived buying a house, and each month becomes a little more easier. At the beginning my wife was freaking out and she didnt think we would be able to afford the taxes, and the mortgage and the utilities.

We made it a point to pay off our credit cards b4 we bought our house and make sure we had some money saved in the bank in case something came up. Believe me something will come up.

[justme222]

Just face it, there must be something in the water, there is no place like it, we've all lost our minds. The good news is prices ARE falling. I've been following the local market (Nassau) for the past year and both rentals and home sales are falling. There are homes that have been up for sale so long I've seen them drop over $100,000.

The current real estate owners that are in denial of this fact find their homes aren't selling. People seem to have a problem seeing the forest through the trees when it comes to any economic trend. Markets rise and fall (housing, stocks, etc). To think a market will stay high forever is foolish. Look at history, everything rises and falls; it always has and it always will.

Even with prices falling however, the long-term outlook for LI is bleak. Property taxes will stay high. Why do you think taxes are so high? Partly because the counties do a good job keeping things up, partly due to high public service worker salaries (120K for the average Nassau county police officer), but mostly because they throw money at the growing problem which will eventually turn LI into only super rich and ghetto areas.

Why MUST you keep housing prices inflated in "nice" areas? To keep the ghetto out of course. If you sell or rent anything for cheap it will become a ghetto. In upstate NY there are plenty of beautiful garden apartments with respectable people living there for very reasonable prices (even when adjusted for area price trends).

But what will ultimately happen? It's undeniable that young people are leaving LI in droves as they must either live with their parents, rent a moldy, illegal basement apartment for $1200/mo or a legal garden apartment for $2500 a month (a mighty fine mortgage payment in most places). There will be few young people left, the rich/old will remain, the ghetto will remain. Soon you are left with only ghetto and rich. The $500,000 tiny houses will fall drastically in value as there are no new young homebuyers and the ghetto will move in.

The only thing that can prevent this is a major adjustment in housing prices and some way to keep the ghetto out. (When I say ghetto I mean the people who don't take care of their property, have 4 children with no way to support them, expect to be given handouts instead of working, and commit greater than 75% of the crimes even though they represent 13% of the population.) It's unfortunate that this is the case but people in this country continue to deny the obvious trends and be politically correct for fear of being ostracized from their society.