[Livindoll]

What's the furthest city in CT commutable to NYC? We live on Long Island now...too expensive. We're looking for a decent sized home...with excellent schools. Schools are the most important..

Any suggestions?

[jdhall1]

Livindoll,
Happy Holidays. For a commutable range to NYC, you will be looking at Fairfield county and southeast Litchfield County (the area north of Brookfield,CT).In my opinion, the furthest east I would go would be the Housatonic River and the furthest north (above I-84) I would even consider would be New Milford, Roxbury and Woodbury.The school systems in the commutable area to NYC are very good, with the exception to Bridgeport and Stratford. The general role for Fairfield county is the south/western part is more expensive and has a lot of old money, and the northern part where I live (and work as Realtor) are suburban and associate more with middle america.

You get the most 'bang' for your buck in Northern Fairfield County and the Candlewood Lake Region. In this year, you'll be looking at about a 70 minute commute to the city. If I were to sell my home (4 bed 2 bath 1800 square foot 1965 split level with a good amount of work done in the last 5 years on an acre in west Danbury), I would list it at $399,900 and it would be easily between $700-$1,000,000 in the lower part of the county (Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, Fairfield, etc). The tax rate is amazing, I don't have the chart with the mill rate for each town I serve, they are in the mid to high $20 per $1000 for assessed value so I pay about $3800 a year for the schools and all the municipal services. Just try to beat that in Long Island, J/k.
If you are looking for a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath colonial with 2500 square feet, the price would be low to mid $500s in Danbury, New Fairfield and Newtown. Redding and Ridgefield are the more upscale towns in the area, you it would cost in the mid $700s.
If you are looking for anything more spefific about of the towns (I'm kind of dosing off now so won't go into more details), let me now.
I will be glad to help you,
Jonathan Hall

[KathleenW2]

Livindoll, my sister lives in Dix Hills. Expensive and high taxes for mediocre schools (hers are in private). The places Jon mentioned in his above post were well described but you're talking a fairly major commute. I always thought of Redding, CT as 'the last outpost'. It has a train station (Branchville) and is close to the Wilton stations as well (Wilton and Cannondale). Check out some train schedules. Danbury is the last stop on the Danbury line (duh) and it is about two hours from NYC. The other CT train line goes along Long Island Sound to Bridgeport with stops at Westport, Greens Farms, Southport, Fairfield along the way. Westport is a one-hour commute on the express train.

The towns all have tee-rrific schools for the most part, so be prepared to pay.

[Livindoll]

We've looked at Monroe and Newtown..but I thought Newtown was way out there...maybe too country-ish for me. We really didn't inspect the whole area, but what we saw sort of turned us off.

Right now, I want to put my two girls in Private school...I'm really not impressed with the schools hear either and we pay outrageous taxes too.

I'm not looking for a shi-shi town...just a town with regular people and kid friendly. We've also checked out Redding and Ridgefield...but it is expensive, I realize that. We are trying to get a bigger house than we have now..which is a 2 bedroom cape. With 2 kids and all these christmas presents...we are going to have to move soon!

We'd be looking for a 3 or 4 bedroom, 2 bath home...property is not a issue, but I want to be on a quiet street...right now we live on a two way, double yellow line...way to busy for the girls to play outside...even supervised.

Any other comments are welcome!

[jdhall1]

Originally Posted by Livindoll

We've looked at Monroe and Newtown..but I thought Newtown was way out there...maybe too country-ish for me. We really didn't inspect the whole area, but what we saw sort of turned us off.

Right now, I want to put my two girls in Private school...I'm really not impressed with the schools hear either and we pay outrageous taxes too.

I'm not looking for a shi-shi town...just a town with regular people and kid friendly. We've also checked out Redding and Ridgefield...but it is expensive, I realize that. We are trying to get a bigger house than we have now..which is a 2 bedroom cape. With 2 kids and all these christmas presents...we are going to have to move soon!

We'd be looking for a 3 or 4 bedroom, 2 bath home...property is not a issue, but I want to be on a quiet street...right now we live on a two way, double yellow line...way to busy for the girls to play outside...even supervised.

Any other comments are welcome!

Livindoll,
Merry Christmas! I do agree with your comment about Newtown about it being a little country. Despite living in the area all of my life, sometimes I feel like I'm in PA when I go to Newtown to show property for my clients about 5 minutes away from I-84.
Danbury is considered the least 'shi-****' town, but there are lots of family friendly, quiet streets once you get outside of the downtown area. I live in one of them now, with a total of 7 houses on the cul da-sac and in the middle of the circle is a grass area owned by the city (but moved on a rotating basis by the people who live on the street) would is good to have kids come over and play soccer or kickball on. Since you are going from Long Island, you will find the taxes to be a lot low, as a general rule, and there are plenty of homes on the market to choose from. I found about a dozen or so on very quiet streets, that could fit your needs between about $350,000 to 450,000. They range from about 1500 all the way up to 2400 square feet.I even a couple of listed that I haven't seen in person seems like the sort of place someone in your situation would be very happy to live in.

I went through the Danbury schools and there's not really anything wrong with it, but it just serves a much larger and much more diverse group of students than the other towns. There are private schools in the area, and if you choose to sent your children there you should look for a Danbury address since they have lower taxes than the other towns. There is a train station downtown (that is pretty much worthless since it goes to Norwalk then you have to change trains and takes about 2 hrs to the city) but most people park at a lot on the west-side of down and a shuttle to the Brewster,NY train station (10 minutes from lot, at most) and it's a 75-85 minute trip each way to Grand Central but the views are very nice on the train, and you don't have to worry about traffic and parking.

I hope to hear back from you shortly,
Jonathan Hall

[ontheroad]

It is a heck of a commute from CT to NYC. I did it from Brewster (living in Sherman--nearest large town, New Milford) to NYC and I think it took about 2hrs (had to drive to the station, or alternately go to the Danbury Station) and I only did it irregularly.

Have you thought about Westchester County as an alternative?

[Livindoll]

We're definetly not going to Danbury...I've looked into Brewster, but I don't know. We were considering Bergen County as well...just high priced homes and high taxes.

What about Monroe...anything good going on there?

[mels]

If you find Newtown to be "country" you may not like Monroe. It has some shops and such but it is a quiet residential town.

[metaljaybird]

What is your price range? You can try Essex County/Morris County, though Essex may have cheaper housing, but higher taxes.

[jdhall1]

Maybe check out Brookfield and New Fairfield, CT. They are the northern suburbs of Danbury. They are not as country as Newtown and Brookfield does have a good amount of stores on federal road (costco, shoprite, panera, a few furniture stores, etc). They are a tiny bit more expensive than Danbury (maybe about $10,000 on a $400,000 home) and just scenic as Redding/Ridgefield, and they have town beaches on a very large manmade lake (Candlewood) and Redding/Ridgefield do not.

I know about the village of Brewster and the town of Southeast (which Brewster is a part of). The area around the train station does have some stores (cafes, small restaurants) but some of it seems a little run down and a lot of day labors hang out outside of a convience store on the way to the village and it kind of distracts (not to get into a politcal conversation about immigration) from the charm. The town of Southeast is very nice and quiet; it is kind of like a lesser devolped version of Newtown; so you still would have to drive to Danbury to do your shopping.

I do know a little bit about Monroe, based on what I read in the NY state forum on this site. It is once a small country town and now the farms are being gobbled up by devolpers and they are building a lot of devolpments and the long time residents don't like it. The properties sell for less there than in my area, but the taxes are at least twice as much.