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These are not accurate rents from today's market. It sounds like what you've written is cut and pasted from another website, however, whatever website it is is outdated.
Yep, Park Slope is pretty much gentrified all the way down to 15th st or so.
The only place it's sketchy is west of 4 ave over by the housing projects and chop shops..kind of in between Park Slope and Caroll Gardens. Those streets can be rough.
I just looked on MLSLI and there is a 2 bedroom apt in Forest Hills 4 blocks from the LIRR train station for $2400 a month or so. You'd be in Penn in 20 minutes from there. Not bad, considering the convenience.
Thanks for the replies, i am hoping to get a 3 bedroom, and havw a budget of about 2500 in mind, everything is still under negotiation though, that is why i am trying to find out if that is "enough", and what we would need to live comforably ie not stress too much about what groceries to buy etc etc.
Hi,
My husband and i will be moving to New York in May, we have 2 children aged 3 and 2. We currently live in Sydney Australia. My husband will be working in manhattan on west 55th. Can anyone give us their opinions on if forest hills or park slope is better in terms of safety ( currently live in neighbourhood where we never have to lock the front door), child care (pre school one or two days a week) and commute? And what sort of budget do we need to have? As rents, childcare and cost of living seems to vary wildly.
Also we are not wanting to bother shipping everything over there, is it possible to furnish a house cheaply, is there good second hand living room furniture etc??
Thanks
Toots
Here you'll always want to lock the door. This is America after all.
Safety, as between Forest Hills and the real Park Slope area (not the Park Slope as real estate brokers define it) is essentially a tie. Both will be safe.
Since you have two kids, you'll probably want a 2BR or bigger. I'd would budget at a minimum $2000/month for rent for Forest Hills. I'd tack on another $500 and probably more than that for Park Slope. I have no children so I have no idea what child care costs. Presumably, it'll be another few hundred dollars a month?
I think if your husband is working in the west fifties, I would give the nod to Forest Hills. The F will put you off at 57th and 6th Ave and the E lets out at 53rd and 7th Ave. I think. Fairly quick and reliable ride on either. Not as familiar with Park Slope but I guess either the 2/3 or maybe the D or N/R would let you off in generally the same area but you would have more stops in Manhattan.
You want to be very close to Austin street, near LIRR for Forest Hills to be convenient. The "city" then is one stop away, a 15-minute ride. $6 each way - oops.
Never lived in Park Slope but may actually move there. It's a "trendier" 'hood. Whatever that means! And closer to work, and all my work is on the Island.
Yep, Park Slope is pretty much gentrified all the way down to 15th st or so.
I'd also love to know where you can find an apartment in Park Slope for $1000 a month. I'd take a closet with a hot plate for that price.
Regarding the commute... Forest Hills may be slightly closer than Park Slope to Midtown, but if you're in north Park Slope, near Flatbush Avenue, you have better train options. The 2/3, Q/B and M/R are all within a short distance, which means you have easy access to express trains that run up Broadway, 6th and 7th Avenues, and a few good ways to get downtown as well.
You can find 2-bedrooms in Park Slope for $2k or so but they're probably better suited for 20-something friends sharing an apartment than for a family. I agree with the poster above who said to tack on another $500 a month to find something relatively comfortable on a good block in Park Slope. (Good in this case meaning both attractive and convenient; there really are no "bad" blocks in the area, in the "dangerous" sense.)
If OP plans to only be here for a finite amount of time - say one to two years, then you might consider getting a rental in a coop building. Some coops allow rentals, but I believe there is usually a limit to how long the rental can be (i.e. up to two years).
I suspect there may be a fair amount of people who own coop apartments who, in a normal market, might sell their apartment but now are deciding to rent them out for a few years while the market hopefully recovers. You might even be able to get a furnished apartment this way and rentals in coops are generally cheaper than rentals in rental buildings.
The benefits are that coop buildings tend to be better cared for than rentals because many people own their units. The downsides are that sometimes there's a coop board approval process, sometimes additional fees, and that you would be renting from an individual (the one who owns the unit) rather than a large management company. This can be good or bad (for me I consider this a downside but others are happier with this sort of arrangement).
Forest Hills has many coop buildings; I'm not sure about Park Slope.
It all depends on what you are looking for! Park Slope is trendier has more coffee shops and trendy shopping. Forest Hills has more of suburban feel to it! Slope is quite a bit more expensive! They both have decent access to midtown! One more thing, you should always lock your doors! They are both great neighborhoods in the greatest city, so whichever you choose I'm sure you will be very happy. Good Luck!
Oh, and child care is probably going to run you closer to $1,000 than a few hundred. Even if you find someone who'll watch your kid for $40 a day (most likely not), that's still $800+
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