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The bolded part is what puzzles me: Why do you say it's "terrible"? Because there aren't many legal multi-family homes compared to single family ones?? Frankly, many (perhaps most?) people would say that state of affairs is preferable.
Or are you talking about high home prices for what you get, compared to other regions of the USA? Nothing new about that, here.
Multi family homes are needed if housing costs are high so that people can afford it. Either that or incomes need to be high enough to support the house payment.
In long island, incomes are low and housing stock is poor, and taxes are high. Three X's instead of three Check Mark's with regards to financial matters.
As for living, it's one of the best I've seen in the US.
Tech giants like google, are not here. Finance companies are not here. Defense contractors are leaving.
Yes quality of living and breathing is amazing (I'd say best in east coast), but if there are no jobs, then the taxes and maybe prices should be like that of Pennsylvania.
Of course not. That's not normal, that's flat-out irresponsible. Anyone who is thinking about spending 75% of their income on housing costs (mortgage P&I, taxes, insurance and utilities) had better either drastically increase their income or drastically lower their expectations about where they can actually afford to live on said income.
Spending 40% or 50% of income for housing costs okay, sure, lots of people here do that. In fact there were some news articles last year saying that about 40% of Long Island homeowners spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs (30% being the accepted norm for housing being "affordable"). But that still means that 60% of homeowners spend less than 30% of their income for that.
Hey, if someone chooses to be house-poor that's up to them but don't blame the SFH/MFH ratio on Long Island for that.
[Top to bottom problems]
1st to blame is corporations which pay a penny on a dollar you make in return for the company.
At this point. Wages are crap.
2nd to blame is the town officials that charge up the rear end for school taxes for at best mediocre schools. Besides, even if the kids graduate and land good jobs, that still wont be enough to own a home in 20 years. So what's the point?
3rd to blame is the housing stock. At this point, 1 and 2 are big and building multi family homes allows for home owners to split the high cost or potentially higher cost in future.
What I am getting from the housing stock on LI is as follows:
Some developers a long time ago realized that some day in the future, the world will be a worse place, and to mitigate the costs of the potentially disastrous future, they built multi family homes --or they did it for profit
Long island developers never did this. I still think people today dont understand the risk of buying a home far away from transportation. A bunch of immigrants will come in cause traffic and those that live far wont even be able to get to work. Just look at today's traffic.
New jersey isnt any better, but at least the cost of living is much lower per buck made.
Actually, NJ has good jobs, has good property taxes (except those top ISD's for rich people), but nothing else. For example, you can buy a 2 family home in Lyndhurst NJ 45 minutes away from wall street jobs door to door for 350k with a bit of TLC with 7k in property taxes and only 150 /month in NJ Transit.
Comapritively, you can get a 2 family home (not really, it is single + Accessory apt) in lindenhurst or babylon for 425k with TLC with 13k in property taxes and 425 in mta fee WITH 1.5 hrs door to door commute.
In long island, incomes are low and housing stock is poor, and taxes are high.
Yes, property taxes are high. No argument there.
But, "incomes are low"?? Define "low", please. In terms of dollars per hour? Even the minimum wage in NY State ($11.80/hr) is higher than 42 of the other 49 states, and minimum wage in NYC is even higher.
You also need to define "poor" in regards to "housing stock." Poor in terms of availability? Hardly. Poor in terms of age and condition? That will vary from house to house, as always. Poor in terms of type, i.e. SFH vs MFH? That too is subjective. The general perception of multi-family housing (other than a true mother/daughter situation in which the families are actually related, rather than a landlord/tenant situation) is that it is less desirable than SFH.
And it's not like rentals are inexpensive here, quite the contrary compared to other parts of the country. A friend of mine lives in a 2-bedroom townhouse apartment in Bay Shore that is literally a stone's throw from the RR tracks. She pays $2400/month plus the cost of electric and gas heat tv/internet and renters insurance; that's $30K a year roughly. It's a nice apartment but hardly luxurious and not in what I'd call an upscale town (other than the areas south of Montauk Highway, and schools are definitely not a selling point although she no longer has kids so that's irrelevant to her.)
Throwing up more units of multi-family housing won't bring down the cost of rentals overall. It will always be more expensive to rent here than in most other parts of the country. All it will do is increase the traffic and parking issues in the areas where new multi family housing is built.
Some developers a long time ago realized that some day in the future, the world will be a worse place, and to mitigate the costs of the potentially disastrous future, they built multi family homes --or they did it for profit
Long island developers never did this. I still think people today dont understand the risk of buying a home far away from transportation. A bunch of immigrants will come in cause traffic and those that live far wont even be able to get to work. Just look at today's traffic.
You're missing the point. LI communities in general were zoned to encourage SFH home ownership and discourage rentals and multi family dwellings. It wasn't a lack of vision, it was a deliberate choice. The fact is that a high proportion of tenants brings down property values in most places (other than actual cities.) The original idea was that LI was to be an escape from/alternative to the population density of NYC and the boroughs. That means SFHs rather than multi dwelling units.
Likewise, LI's transportation was "designed around the automobile", as the saying goes. Not for mass transit other than to and from NYC. Did Robert Moses properly anticipate the future restrictive nature of building parkways that couldn't be widened because of stone-bridge overpasses? No, he didn't. But nobody stopped the tract developers from building right up to the greenbelts of all the parkways, either.
I don't see what "immigrants causing traffic" has to do with anything. Population is population. If you have a family of two adults + two teenagers, each with their own car (typical), their contribution to LI traffic is going to be same whether that family lives in a SFH or in a 3-bedroom apartment.
I agree that our mass transportation system is inadequate for anything other than east/west. But there's no cure for that, given the built-out nature of LI, unless you start wholesale seizure of private property via eminent domain in order to create additional transportation infrastructure. Good luck with that, lol.
Last edited by BBCjunkie; 01-11-2020 at 02:47 PM..
Right, is normal living, earning 4k a month and spending 3k on house?
Of course not. And I wouldn’t advise someone earning $4k a month to even buy a home in NY unless an extremely large down payment is given at closing.
Or perhaps not many multi homes because many of us prefer to live like normal human beings and alone. And not have to deal with the headaches of a tenant or even worse live with other family members.
Multi-family homes brings in all CLASSES of people.....and once the wrong CLASS moves in......get ready to move out......
Of course not. And I wouldn’t advise someone earning $4k a month to even buy a home in NY unless an extremely large down payment is given at closing.
Giving a large down payment is useless when rates are at 3.5% You are better off paying the extra interest and buying multiple homes.
Giving a large down payment is useless when rates are at 3.5% You are better off paying the extra interest and buying multiple homes.
And your debt-to-income ratio will be staggering (in the wrong direction) unless you are making big bucks. Which circles right back to the can-you-actually-afford-what-you-want question.
I get that some people don't believe that having a decent amount of equity (IMHO, at least 30%) in their home is a good or even necessary thing. Personally I don't agree but I come from a generation that believed that most debt, for most people, is NOT a good thing. I was raised with the mindset that interest payments should only flow in one direction: from the bank to me, not the other way around. I realize that some people don't agree, and if they are in a financial position that allows them to take on some risk, good for them. It's their life and their money, to do with as they wish.
Some people simply don't want to be landlords or have multiple homes, even if mortgage rates were to drop to 2% or less. Some people are risk-averse and would rather have that equity available to them if ever needed for collateral in the future.
People used to celebrate the "burning of the mortgage" after making that final payment. I do wonder sometimes, when hearing the cavalier attitude that some people have toward debt - as if it's a game to be played - whether there will come a day that people assume they will always have a mortgage.... even in retirement. As if it's somehow "normal" or even somehow "desirable." Sorry, can't wrap my mind around that way of thinking.
And your debt-to-income ratio will be staggering (in the wrong direction) unless you are making big bucks. Which circles right back to the can-you-actually-afford-what-you-want question.
I get that some people don't believe that having a decent amount of equity (IMHO, at least 30%) in their home is a good or even necessary thing. Personally I don't agree but I come from a generation that believed that most debt, for most people, is NOT a good thing. I was raised with the mindset that interest payments should only flow in one direction: from the bank to me, not the other way around. I realize that some people don't agree, and if they are in a financial position that allows them to take on some risk, good for them. It's their life and their money, to do with as they wish.
Some people simply don't want to be landlords or have multiple homes, even if mortgage rates were to drop to 2% or less. Some people are risk-averse and would rather have that equity available to them if ever needed for collateral in the future.
People used to celebrate the "burning of the mortgage" after making that final payment. I do wonder sometimes, when hearing the cavalier attitude that some people have toward debt - as if it's a game to be played - whether there will come a day that people assume they will always have a mortgage.... even in retirement. As if it's somehow "normal" or even somehow "desirable." Sorry, can't wrap my mind around that way of thinking.
If rates are at 18% like they were in the 70s/80s in "your time", then that screams "buy cash". When rates are low, like 3% or 4%, it means that someone out there will go to the bank, borrow money, and bid up the price of the next home or business and pay it off over time.
Quite frankly, it is criminal to have rates this low because people like you, who think debt is bad, will get crushed. People who borrow a lot at low rates will do -ok because someone will do it, and you just have to be the earlier person on the bus to get off rather than the latter. You, are the bus driver and the bus isn't going anywhere forward.
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