Old westbury???

[leeber01]

Originally Posted by Scarlethazeltine

Cooncat and Coney thank you both. I am actually going to look into east hills. You are right about my perception of suburban towns with villages being more urban in feel. My mother is retiring and will be living with us and I have a nanny now. I guess what I am saying is that I researched Greenlawn a lot and it does seem like kids play outside, there are several local festivals and the library has programs for kids. I am just wondering if old Westbury or now East Hills have similar offerings. Have decided to look again in Nassau for several reasons including concern about commute time to manhattan daily and low inventory in Harborfields section of Huntington and Greenlawn

Old Westbury does not have its own library. You would use Shelter Rock library, which is a great library with many programs but it serves a wide range of communities other than OW. You could also EW library, but that one is much smaller and some programs are open only to EW residents. OW does not have any local festivals but I believe it recently tried to start an annual resident picnic. There are also no public playgrounds or pools in OW--I mean, if you have an estate, do you need a public park?


If it is really important for you to have kids spontaneously playing outside, OW is definitely not the place for you. But then again, remember that even if you buy a house on a block set up for that (e.g. cul de sac in a area with lots of kids similar in age to your kid) there is no guarantee it will happen--parents have widely varying attitudes about it, and the truth is there are lots of scheduled afterschool activities that hamper that from happening.

[Scarlethazeltine]

Originally Posted by leeber01

Old Westbury does not have its own library. You would use Shelter Rock library, which is a great library with many programs but it serves a wide range of communities other than OW. You could also EW library, but that one is much smaller and some programs are open only to EW residents. OW does not have any local festivals but I believe it recently tried to start an annual resident picnic. There are also no public playgrounds or pools in OW--I mean, if you have an estate, do you need a public park?


If it is really important for you to have kids spontaneously playing outside, OW is definitely not the place for you. But then again, remember that even if you buy a house on a block set up for that (e.g. cul de sac in a area with lots of kids similar in age to your kid) there is no guarantee it will happen--parents have widely varying attitudes about it, and the truth is there are lots of scheduled afterschool activities that hamper that from happening.

Leeber01 thank you for your detailed response. I have listened to what everyone has to say and it seems like old Westbury is just not for us. I really like what I am hearing about East Williston and my realtor will be showing us homes there, in cold spring harbor and garden city next Sunday. If it doesn't pan out next Sunday we will wait till spring and target Harborfields school district and cold spring harbor but really trying to open up my mind to Nassau due to my need to commute by LIRR to Manhattan daily. There is a little bit of pressure because we found a wonderful buyer for our home in Queens and he has been patiently waiting for us to find a place.

[longislanddude]

Originally Posted by Scarlethazeltine

Leeber01 thank you for your detailed response. I have listened to what everyone has to say and it seems like old Westbury is just not for us. I really like what I am hearing about East Williston and my realtor will be showing us homes there, in cold spring harbor and garden city next Sunday. If it doesn't pan out next Sunday we will wait till spring and target Harborfields school district and cold spring harbor but really trying to open up my mind to Nassau due to my need to commute by LIRR to Manhattan daily. There is a little bit of pressure because we found a wonderful buyer for our home in Queens and he has been patiently waiting for us to find a place.

Did you ever find a place?

I was looking in Roslyn Heights, East Hills, Manhasset, PW and GN avoiding old westbury since I thought the houses/taxes there were beyond what I could afford, but it seems that there are some houses in the 1.2-1.5 range with taxes in the 20s that we could afford and have nice lots. RH seems overpriced compared to OW in some cases where any new construction is 2m+ on a 10k sqft lot, and taxes are in the mid to upper 30s. Older homes aren't much better with asking prices of 1.5-1.7m for a 3.5-4k sqft home + renovation costs which are not cheap. We dont have kids yet, and own our place in Manhattan, so not in a rush. This thread was very helpful though.