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Actually these places aren't towns but names of old cross roads and taverns. Drove me crazy when I'd head out somewhere for a Sunday drive, get there and be looking at a name on a sign and a whole lotta of nuthin.
This was certainly one of the reasons that home prices were inflated, but not the only reason. There is a certain crowd mentality that grips all markets (look at the history of the stock market) from time to time.
There was a feeling by many people that prices could only continue to go up, making them feel that they better get on the train before it leaves the station. This was fed, in large part, by the media.
We are now seeing the same phenomana, but in the opposite direction. All we see is negative news and it leads people to believe that the only direction that house prices can go is down.
You have seen me write many times that people should treat a house as a home, not as a short term investment. However, the best way to make money is to be contrarian. Buy when everyone is screaming the sky is falling and sell when everyone thinks that the good times can never end.
One thing that I can tell you for sure is that people, as a group, have very short memories. Sometime in the next 10-15 years you will certainly see a repeat of the irrational run away home prices that we experienced earlier in this decade.
Your comment negates the argument that LI is different or unique with regards to real estate. Yes, it will always be more expensive to live there because of its proximity to NYC, but the basic rules of economics still apply. If prices rise past the point of what the median wage earner could normally afford (like they did) because one part of the equation increased (freely available money via mortgages to all), they’ll drop when the equation evens out (available money source dries up for all but the legitimately qualified). Fewer dollars chasing too many homes will make prices come down. Not a unique situation at all.
But it may not be that way for awhile. Even though where I live now looks a lot like the Island did population/traffic wise back in the early 80's, I still had a lot of years of very low taxes, good bang for the buck housing combined with an excellent salary. All that added up to a nice nest egg, college cash for the kids and investments; all things that I doubt I would have had staying on the Island.
True, when people who say area “X” will be just like LI soon, the point missed is that it is not like that now. In fact many areas will take some time to get that way, if at all. Example, Nassau County has 1.3 million people in about 400 or so square miles. The entire metropolitan areas of many of the cities and areas where people are moving too don’t have that large a population. Many of the counties in the area I’m in are twice as large in size and have a population of 100,000 or less. It would take quite some time for the population of these areas to grow to the size of Nassau. Meanwhile, there are many years low tax and relatively congestion free travel living ahead.
IMO, not true. Many people are moving, or want to move, away from LI for purely economic reasons. It's simply getting too difficult for them financially to pay $8000+ a year for taxes, or to afford to buy your average $400,000 - $500,000 house. They have no problem with the "lifestyle": They like having a huge range of retail and restaurant and doctor and hospital and recreational choices close by. They like our moderate, rarely-any-extremes climate. They like being close to a major city and airports. They like having high-speed broadband, and public water, and (in many cases) sewers instead of cesspools. And they like having good schools, especially compared to places like Florida.
IMO the tax rate and the house price are not "lifestyle" items. They are economic items. Our tax rate is largely determined by our schools; that is not a "lifestyle". And if the same exact house costs $500K here but $200K in Upper Toadspittle, WhateverState, the "lifestyle" of living in that house is the same in both locations; it's the local market that has determined its price.
And so if their tax bill and/or the house prices were lower, those people would NOT be talking about relocating from Long Island. But for many it simply comes down to income versus Property Tax and/or House Price outgo. IMO, most other things on LI are really not more expensive than you'd find the same item priced at in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Can you think of any consumer goods that are pricier on LI than elsewhere? We're not Hawaii, after all....
IMO it's unfair to say that people who are relocating from LI for purely economic reasons is "wrong". It's just as valid a reason for them as for those who can afford the taxes and house prices to decide to move because they don't like the traffic, or all the malls, or because they want 2 or 5 or more acres of land rather than 1/4 or 1/3.
A case can be made that no area can have all of the conveniences that Long Island does without also having home prices and property taxes (in order to support all those amenities) that are also significantly higher than the norm. One can't have one's cake and eat it too.
I agree with your premise that people moving from LI for economic reasons is not wrong, but the combination of the things you describe, having amenities like shopping, doctors, moderate climate, major cities and airports, high speed internet, public water and sewers and good public schools can be found in many places besides LI. Let’s face it, most of what the average suburban family does can be done anywhere in the country – all of the things you described above, plus your average young family activities like T-ball, soccer, ballet, gymnastics, football, etc…
Yes, basic staples may cost about the same in other places, but items like utilities, insurance, gasoline, milk, property taxes are a lot more costly on LI. And that does add up.
Yup, your right. Population density is a problem on LI
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redd Jedd
True, when people who say area “X” will be just like LI soon, the point missed is that it is not like that now. In fact many areas will take some time to get that way, if at all. Example, Nassau County has 1.3 million people in about 400 or so square miles. The entire metropolitan areas of many of the cities and areas where people are moving too don’t have that large a population. Many of the counties in the area I’m in are twice as large in size and have a population of 100,000 or less. It would take quite some time for the population of these areas to grow to the size of Nassau. Meanwhile, there are many years low tax and relatively congestion free travel living ahead.
Nasau and suffolk combined have a population of 2.8 million which is more than of many states. If you throw Brooklyn and Queens in than the geographic entity of Long Island has around 8 million people packed on an Island 120 miles long, but only 20 miles at its widest. Now North Carolina is growing, but the entire state has around 9 million people - there is plenty of room still there.
The very high population density is one reason why people leave; the traffic, the lack of open spaces, tyhe higher cost of living are all functions of higher population density.
Most parts of the country that Long Islanders are moving to have cheaper homes because there is lots of land and much lower populations. Those places will never be as densely populated as LI.
Nasau and suffolk combined have a population of 2.8 million which is more than of many states. If you throw Brooklyn and Queens in than the geographic entity of Long Island has around 8 million people packed on an Island 120 miles long, but only 20 miles at its widest. Now North Carolina is growing, but the entire state has around 9 million people - there is plenty of room still there.
The very high population density is one reason why people leave; the traffic, the lack of open spaces, tyhe higher cost of living are all functions of higher population density.
Most parts of the country that Long Islanders are moving to have cheaper homes because there is lots of land and much lower populations. Those places will never be as densely populated as LI.
That’s the point I was making – with the exception of places like metro Atlanta, Northern VA and parts of Florida, there are many “hot” places people move to, but they will not be as crowded as LI is for quite some time, or ever. This is in response to those who say “everyone is moving to this place or that place, so pretty soon it will be just like LI”. I think some who make statements like that don’t realize just how large and open these places, how crowded LI really is and how much time and growth it would take to get that way.
But here's the problem. You (not you personally) go to those cheaper states and their taxes wind up going up to support you. You are used to having things. You go to a place where the culture is a little different than yours and you still want things you had on Long Island not the stuff that's in the new state. The towns have to add more police and more fire and widen the roads to accommodate additional population growth. Then you want more stores and restaurant choices. They have to build new schools to accommodate your kids. Pretty soon the new place is just as traffic congested and expensive as the place you left.
Absolutely, correct. That is why people should do more homework before they just up and move to somewhere, because the problems people are looking to get away from may just appear in another form in the new place. For example people who complain of high taxes and traffic should not decide to move to another area with sprawl, they will face the same issues over time.
The problem with the "but NC has more space so won't achieve density" argument is twofold:
1) In any area, there's an effective "build out" limit at which point places are too far to be viable for commuting. The Triangle is actually unusual because it's so decentralized and allows a larger area than, say, Atlanta.
2) In the Sunbelt, they aren't building at the density that Nassau (especially western Nassau) has, so build-out will actually be achieved more quickly, and often build-out can be more of a problem than the density of a given area. It will be like western Suffolk, and this poses its own set of challenges. It may feel a bit less crowded in any given area, but lower-density sprawl can feel equally confining, and it's harder to develop alternative transportation without the density to use it.
But here's the problem. You (not you personally) go to those cheaper states and their taxes wind up going up to support you. You are used to having things. You go to a place where the culture is a little different than yours and you still want things you had on Long Island not the stuff that's in the new state. The towns have to add more police and more fire and widen the roads to accommodate additional population growth. Then you want more stores and restaurant choices. They have to build new schools to accommodate your kids. Pretty soon the new place is just as traffic congested and expensive as the place you left.
This is absolutely the case; this is exactly what has happened to Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Upstate NY. Taxes in all those places have at least quadrupled over the last 10-15 years. Why? Because of people from the Boston and NYC areas moving in. Natives of those rural areas are being driven out by the exessive taxes for all the "perks" that us cosmopolitan people demand when we invade their rural towns. In Vermont the Teachers Unions have become as powerful as the ones here on LI, and even though the number of registered students has steadily dropped, the number and salaries of teachers are almost twice that of ten years ago.
I was born and raised on LI; I learned to swim and clam with my feet in the Great South Bay, but then the Bay became polluted. There used to be numerous forested areas near my house, now they are all condos and townhouses, and over the past 10 years traffic on my street has gone from a few cars every few minutes to at least 20 per minute. The traffic noise is driving me insane, and the worst part is that all this new traffic is not from my Village (Brightwaters), but the surrounding towns of Bay Shore and the Islips. The Town of Islip has allowed fervent development to destroy the Island with no regard for increasing traffic and drainage problems.
Will LI become a ghost-town? NO, but the demographics are not the same as when I grew up here. Most people I went to school with have left because they cannot afford to live here. In the past few years the Republican base has turned Democrat (newbies are all from liberal NYC, Nassau and Brooklyn, Queens), and well, guess what? Our taxes are going up for the first time in over 15 years. Note that the same exact thing happened to Vermont, NH, Maine and Upstate NY - ask any native who has lived there for generations, and they hate Democrats, yet, guess what - all those areas are now controlled by Dems, and all they have to show for it is over-development, increased traffic and HIGHER TAXES!
My brother lives in Vermont. His girlfriend grew up in rural Upstate NY and she knows exactly what is killing Vermont. She said that her school didn't have all the same perks as we do here on LI, but that even though the residents wanted all the perks, when they had to vote to actually PAY for them they always voted NO, so taxes stayed low and the schools focused on the necessities only. The problem in Vermont is that the newbies took over the government and forced urban-style liberal policies upon the entire state and taxes rose so high so fast, that Killington tried to secceed from Vermont to New Hampshire to avoid the insane new school-tax structure (similar to what NYC schools are trying to do here in NY - take money from "wealthy" areas and distribute it to poor areas).
The influx of urbanites into the country is not only making those areas too expensive to live in, but it is also destroying the traditional character. My brother and his girlfriend fit the traditional lifestyle - all they do is ski, mountain climb, kayak, camp and go rifle shooting. The newbies hate that - they want guns and hunting banned. The newbies also create laws preventing farmers and loggers from digging irrigation ponds and cutting down trees because it is "bad" for the environment (in fact, they are dead wrong about this). Nobody cares more about protecting the environment than those who rely on it for their livelihoods, but all the newbies only care about their tourist friends who want to see a "pristine wildreness" (which hasn't existed since the Pilgrims landed). That's the kind of logic that blamed the local clammers and fishermen here on LI for polluting the water. BS! Nobody ever blames the uber-rich urbanite developers.
The too-expensive-too-survive dilemma has now spread to Upstate NY as well, as far as 3 hours from NYC. My aunt and uncle have lived over 2 hours from the city since 1980, but over the past 10 years the costs of housing and taxes have reached the same level as here on LI. Their taxes are now almost $9,000 a year, vs. $2,000 ten years ago. Rents are between $1-2,000 a month for a 1-bedroom apartment. I used to have a vacation house near them in the 1980's and 1990's, and it was nothing but farmland and 2 general stores around us. Now, I don't even want to know. But, over 2 HOURS commute from NYC and people are doing it everyday - by car, because Metro North does not go that far. Disgusting!
I do not have kids, and the main reason is that I live here on LI. First, it is way too expensive. But more importantly, I want my kids to grow up how I did - in a clean environment where the schools do not brainwash them into anti-Constitutional, Socialistic ways of thinking.
I wonder who will be doing all the landscape work here on LI in 20 years. My theory is that by then all the illegals will have been given amnesty, all us "natives" will have fled, the migrants having bought our homes. I read another post on City-Data about the changing demographics of the NYC area, and someone noted how the Irish have been fleeing since the 1970's, but the Italians refused to give up their neighborhoods, but that over the past couple of years even the Italians have begun to flee, and that is the signal to GET OUT NOW! Well, where I grew up on LI EVERYONE was Irish, Italian or both, and everyone was Catholic (I knew one Lutheran and one Episcopalian). By the 2000 census that had changed quite a bit, but I'm sure the 2010 census will show even the Irish and Italians in the minority. Personally, I blame the liberalization of the Catholic Church for a lot of this. Anyway, in my opinion, especially if you have kids, it's time to GET OUT NOW!
Oh yeah, proof that LI is not the same as it once was: When I was a kid my best memories of school were the Thanksgiving parties (dressed up as Pilgrims and Indians), the Christmas Pageant, and Easter egg hunts. All at a PUBLIC school. Downtown Bay Shore used to have a CHRISTMAS celebration. Now it is a "Winter" or "Holiday" celebration, and I somehow doubt the kids today are out on the school lawn searching for Easter eggs. Whatever.
Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 700,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 15,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads. 
Yup, your right. Population density is a problem on LI
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