Starter Houses on Long Island? (Islip, Centereach: apartments, HOA fees, home owners insurance)

[NYSinger]

Originally Posted by Glen NY

I have friends who travel 70-80 miles oneway to work and their homes are valued at 375-500K. They are up in Orange and Putnam counties. Bare in mind they have move to the lowest affordable areas they could find.

I am starting to look into those two counties and it is a possibility. As long as we remain close to NYC. At the moment, I do not need to commute each day to the city, more like once or twice a week.

[fopt65]

A friend of mine was in Putnam county, Kent/ Lake Carmel area. It was beautiful and tranquil, close to Brewster RR station and close to Routes 684/84. He left to take a different job, and he does miss it.

[FormerKPer]

Have you thought of Hicksville? I have friends there, and they live in a nice neighborhood and aren't too far from the train. It's fairly middle class in price and niceness; I felt very comfortable there.

I grew up in Kings Park (living in Northern Florida now). It's a great place to live, from my recollection, and when I visited a couple of years ago I felt the same. The sense of community is wonderful, there's lots of greenery, and the neighborhoods are nice but not overdone.

But when I put on paper what I love about it there, I have pretty much all of it here in my town now. And the difference in housing is astounding. I see friends struggling to buy a simple house, nothing extravagant. They could have paid for my house in one fell swoop with the money they had saved (and yet that money wasn't enough for anything on Long Island). Granted, salaries are definitely higher up there. But the difference is not proportional to the cost of living. We don't live extravagantly down here, but we do live comfortably. I'd never be able to afford this way of life back in KP.

[NYSinger]

Originally Posted by FormerKPer

Have you thought of Hicksville? I have friends there, and they live in a nice neighborhood and aren't too far from the train. It's fairly middle class in price and niceness; I felt very comfortable there.

I grew up in Kings Park (living in Northern Florida now). It's a great place to live, from my recollection, and when I visited a couple of years ago I felt the same. The sense of community is wonderful, there's lots of greenery, and the neighborhoods are nice but not overdone.

Hicksville might be to consider. I would have to look more into it. I have driven through Kings Park and it is very nice. Unfortunately, there are not many areas we can afford on Long Island. Would love to move to a state where we can really make it, like down south (though I am afraid of hurricanes!), but I gotta remain close to NYC....Frustrating, isn't it??

[DonnaPGH]

No starter homes on LI. Even if you get a cottage on the Eastern end, they are exspensive. Good luck!

[mrradio]

on Long Island is the ever-increasing property taxes. My last house, nice but not great, had taxes of over $11,000. I left the Island after fifty plus years.

[NYSinger]

I know. Hoping the bubble will burst and the market will become more of a buyers market!!!

If you don't mind me asking, where did you move to, mrradio?

[antipode12]

Starter houses? Umm, not really. I was in the maket too. (Make $100000) Anything under $400000 is really a shack or a shambles.

Some of the people here have suggested towns that I would NEVER recommend to transplants. Hicksville?!? these are typical LI towns: tracts and tracts of ratty, rundown, commercial zoning (strip malls), traffic to die in, and a nexus of every commuter in the universe. (LIRR, LIE and Parkway all intersect with two very important state routes:106/107) And let's not discuss the homogenized, sprawled housing they call neighborhoods. Cramped and loud, you'd really have to BE a Long Islander to move to Hicksville.

Starter houses are becoming scarce in Mastic/ Shirley area, despite the fact that they are tiny, tiny, tiny (cottages, really) and that the area is known as the fast food capital of the world. (My friend who lives and grew up there calls it Jerry Springer-ville.) The schools budgets typically get voted down. (Read: austerity.)

Huntington? Are you kidding? Great town that young people and starters simply cannot afford. $550 starter.

Honestly, the only decent starter location might be North Shore out east in Suffolk: Rocky Point, Wading River, Mt. Sinai. But give it time. People are putting up McMansions in Manorville. They'll get to these towns soon, too.

[mangelb1975]

There are no starter houses for cheap anywhere on Long island. I have a family of 6 and only one income, less than 100,000 and were just making it. I read in newsday a few weeks back that even people making a 100,000 a year can't afford to purchase there own home, that there asking the housing authority to allow them in there lotteries, which there considering. Taxes in some areas of long island have sky rocketed to 18,000 a year. I live in Centereach, which is not the greatest place to live, but ok, and the house next to me sold for $350,000 so good luck!

[NYSinger]

Geeze...and I was just recently looking at Centereach as a good town to get a starter house!!!

I hate to rent. The landlords get richer and I don't own any property...