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Your $8k to $9k tax home sounds low. One way or another your taxes are going up.
You may think the taxes are "100% worth it" but you'd be wrong! It drives up costs across the board. Taxes on my grandfathers lovely $1.2m house in Brooklyn are under $6k. My crap Levitt taxes are $11.5k. You can call it worth it. I call it extortion.
That Linden Blvd house will appreciate at 35% or maybe much more over the next 10 years as NYC continues to gentrify. Your dad is sitting on a pot of gold. Your Huntington home will maybe appreciate 2-8% and your taxes will go up endlessly. I hope you enjoy it enough to still be worth it.
Many of us here pretend it's worth it because we like it here, know the potential and for whatever reason we call it home, but few will tell you their taxes are 'worth it."
Stick around a while and enjoy the corruption, malfeasance and dysfunctional govt! See where your taxes actually go and what you get back. Give us your updated review in a year or two.
Well it's worth it if you have school age kids and you value their education. Aside from that, it's not worth living in LI for most and the tax increases don't look good in the near future. NYC schools are crappy and overcrowded for the most part....everyone knows that.
Millena - I have to agree with you on the taxes / school issue. We moved to Nassau County in 1997 from our home in Brooklyn. Our taxes in Bklyn were approximately $2,000, the taxes in our new Nassau County home were $6,000. However, if we were still in Bklyn, we would have had to send each of our 3 sons to a private school as the local schools were not to our liking. So, the $6,000 in real estate taxes were (get ready for this...) a bargain, as our schools here in Nassau County are considerably better than our old neighborhood in Bklyn.
BTW, each of sons have graduated from the local high school, went to NYS colleges and have all graduated. Now, we are faced with paying the taxes that were once a bargain, but now not so much....
Why is that - because they've increased drastically?
I would really consider to move back to the city in a condo apt. Or small house when my kids are off to college.
Yes, definitely. As soon as we retire, I'll go to a smaller place wherever my daughter settles OR go back to Florida to relax more. Unless LI suddenly is affordable and we can remain paying the taxes.
Your $8k to $9k tax home sounds low. One way or another your taxes are going up.
You may think the taxes are "100% worth it" but you'd be wrong! It drives up costs across the board. Taxes on my grandfathers lovely $1.2m house in Brooklyn are under $6k. My crap Levitt taxes are $11.5k. You can call it worth it. I call it extortion.
That Linden Blvd house will appreciate at 35% or maybe much more over the next 10 years as NYC continues to gentrify. Your dad is sitting on a pot of gold. Your Huntington home will maybe appreciate 2-8% and your taxes will go up endlessly. I hope you enjoy it enough to still be worth it.
Many of us here pretend it's worth it because we like it here, know the potential and for whatever reason we call it home, but few will tell you their taxes are 'worth it." Basically it's just an uneven comparison. There are many lifestyle and financial differences between the city and the suburbs.
Stick around a while and enjoy the corruption, malfeasance and dysfunctional govt! See where your taxes actually go and what you get back. Give us your updated review in a year or two.
Do you have kids? Sure, it may be a pot of gold.
How long can you hold kids inside the home and prevent them from hanging out in less than safe neighborhoods and bad schools? I don't understand your alternative.
What option do you have other than to pay money to send your kids to excellent schools for their futures?
Also - have you ever been to a library in SE Queens? Have you seen any type of town events, family activities, do you see the grocery stores?
Until you visit there often and attempt to live there, I think the situation is grass is always greener.
If it were just my husband and myself, sure, we'd stay anywhere. I can drive out and shop or dine in any town's great amenities while paying super cheap living expenses. But this move is for my daughter's school and a family neighborhood to raise her.
Doubt it will be $10k in property taxes 20 years from now when my kids are off to college. Can easily see it being double that at the current rate of increase.
IDK, but we don't have family in L.I. for the moment (Queens and Florida). So when my daughter graduates, if she decides not to make a life in L.I., we certainly won't be there paying the taxes for no reason.
How long can you hold kids inside the home and prevent them from hanging out in less than safe neighborhoods and bad schools? I don't understand your alternative.
What option do you have other than to pay money to send your kids to excellent schools for their futures?
Also - have you ever been to a library in SE Queens? Have you seen any type of town events, family activities, do you see the grocery stores?
Until you visit there often and attempt to live there, I think the situation is grass is always greener.
1. yes I do. 2. I'm not leaving Long Island. I just pointed out there are opposing forces in your post. Linden isn't highway robbery as you suggest and Huntington isn't "worth the taxes" just because it's "safer" for kids.
NYC gets such a bad rap from the fear filled LI nimby faithful. Some areas infinitely better than LI neighborhoods with better schools, charters, magnets, performance based opportunities (LI's art school needed a donation from Billy Joel to stay open and will close in a year or two). Kids have "survived" NYC for a long time. Seems some are having a hard time surviving Huntington Station and Brentwood.
I'm not being mean. I'm trying to correct the sterotype that NYC is hell and LI is utopia, kids or no kids and that what we pay doesn't matter.
It comes down to lifestyle choices and income. Neighborhood matters whether it's NYC, Bay Shore or Nebraska. If your library branch is nasty and you hate bodegas, well, probably need to try to upgrade or head out to the 'burbs, or one of the many dozens of more affluent neighborhoods in Queens. Not sure that's news to anyone.
1. yes I do. 2. I'm not leaving Long Island. I just pointed out there are opposing forces in your post. Linden isn't highway robbery as you suggest and Huntington isn't "worth the taxes" just because it's "safer" for kids.
NYC gets such a bad rap from the fear filled LI nimby faithful. Some areas infinitely better than LI neighborhoods with better schools, charters, magnets, performance based opportunities (LI's art school needed a donation from Billy Joel to stay open and will close in a year or two). Kids have "survived" NYC for a long time. Seems some are having a hard time surviving Huntington Station and Brentwood.
I'm not being mean. I'm trying to correct the sterotype that NYC is hell and LI is utopia, kids or no kids and that what we pay doesn't matter.
It comes down to lifestyle choices and income. Neighborhood matters whether it's NYC, Bay Shore or Nebraska. If your library branch is nasty and you hate bodegas, well, probably need to try to upgrade or head out to the 'burbs, or one of the many dozens of more affluent neighborhoods in Queens. Not sure that's news to anyone.
No, certainly not Utopia. I don't know if I have different expectations than people who have lived in L.I. all their lives and have family there. First of all, we're a black and hispanic family - so I laugh at the survival of Huntington Station and Brentwood, etc. I don't know those towns so well, but it's a little funny bordering on racist. That's ok, I know where that all stands. We're not there to make utopia friendships and such - just for a nice neighborhood for my daughter to be raised, have a great school and some good amenities. The amenities in SE Queens are just gross.
I live in SE Queens. I live near Linden. It is certainly not highway robbery. But it happens, I'm sure, every single day. I turn a blind eye and we have for many years. That would be ok if it were just us two - but not ok for continuing to raise our daughter. If we could keep her inside forever? Sure. But not when she wants to prance around as a teen, etc. So for those reasons, Linden is not good enough. And I'm still baffled at how any middle class or lower income family might have money to buy these million dollar Linden properties. They said Jamaica was going to be gentrified soon when I moved here 8 years ago. It's still the same as 10 years ago.
And I get the jumping on NYC. But man, it's a rough life. SO rough. Overcrowding everywhere, everything expensive is nice and becomes polluted. It takes me 1 hour to get to another borough 5 miles away. So exhausting and the schools suck and so do the crowds. So for that reason, you know?
I think you are comparing apples to oranges. Southeast Queens, Jamaica to Huntington. Your father's area is not known for being one of the better NYC neighborhoods. You want to move on up, I get it. But it wouldn't matter if it were a better neighborhood in NYC or a Long Island town. Move wherever you can get the best deal for what you can afford.
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