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Hello all , interested moving to Albany
How is the public transportation? how often the buses run every 30 min etc?
150k house, how much would the housing tax be a year?
thanks all!
Hello all , interested moving to Albany
How is the public transportation? how often the buses run every 30 min etc?
150k house, how much would the housing tax be a year?
thanks all!
Depends on where you live. My Albany house is worth @ that much and property + school taxes total @ $5K per year. You can buy an awful lot of house by comparison to downstate. Public transportation is nowhere near as useful as it is in the City, and a car is pretty much an absolute necessity.
I think taxes vary throughout the city. The nicer areas, and the closer you get to downtown... taxes seem to be higher from what I've seen looking at property online. The taxes should be highlighted online when you pull up the property profile.
I can't speak to the exact time between buses, but I have to disagree with the above comment "car is pretty much an absolute necessity" . While, I personally would not want to live in the area without a car.. it's totally doable.
My mother doesn't drive (never has) and gets around just fine. Becuase my mom doesn't drive, my parents were selective in where they purchased a home. They live in a good area off of Madison Ave.. which she can walk a block to the Price Chopper, the bank, resturants, hair dresser, etc.. you name it. She has always taken the bus to work (Albany Med)- and gets to where she needs to go. The issues she has, is lugging a 50lb bag of dog food on the bus from Petsmart/Petco (?)- so she gets a ride there when she needs it.
If you don't have a car you'll live, but yes... it would be better with one!
I'll second mls012 about the Albany public transit. It is very good for a city its size, and probably better than many what many much larger cities have. You can even live out in some of the suburbs and be able to fairly easily commute into downtown Albany. If you're going to be working in downtown Albany, then you probably should make easy access to transit even if you have a car.
You will be pleasantly surprised at housing costs in the Albany area as they are much less than in metro NYC. I think that probably the priciest general area in the entire Albany region is Saratoga Springs but even there, the housing prices don't have a patch on downstate's prices.
Generally, the city of Albany has higher taxes than the neighboring suburbs of Colonie and Guilderland for homes of comparative value. Bethlehem may have lower tax rates but many more of the homes there tend to be much higher in price than in Guilderland and Colonie. Rensselaer County (Rensselaer, Troy, East Greenbush) taxes tended to be higher than Albany County taxes when I lived there, probably because Albany had so much more commercial development than across the river.
Colonie is the best if you really want low taxes and bus transportation. I would do east of I-87, near Central Ave (near Sunset Lanes Bowling).
Colonie's taxes are a fair bit lower than Albany's. However, unless you live at the Wolf Rd/Central Ave intersection (and are there even any houses there?) where lots of bus lines converge, and don't mind buses that come every 45-90 minutes, it is much more difficult to use public transit in Colonie than in Albany.
One great thing about the buses here is that they all have bike racks, so many people combine bike and bus to do their traveling.
If you are used to public transportation downstate, you will not be satisfied with it in Albany, but also you will not need it as much because there is less congestion (UNLESS you are commuting from Saratoga to Albany, in which case public transportation will not work for you anyway). I would buy a cheap used car.
For housing, you will be pleasantly surprised how far your money goes. Trust me. I made the opposite move and I cry at each rent bill, lol.
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