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Any advice on which apartment complexes or areas that are the best but most affordable to move to, in or near Jersey City?
I'm a 30-something, single woman from a farming community in Idaho where people can leave their cars unlocked with the keys in the engine and their smartphones in plain sight on their dashboards without having a lick of trouble and the only gunshots you hear are farmers taking out voles or jackrabbits on their land.
I'm moving to the Jersey City area for work with a brand new car which I'm lucky that I drive decent between tractors but haven't seen much heavy traffic in my life.
So, if you can't tell by that how clueless I am about major cities little lone Jersey City, then let me tell you: I am CLUELESS.
Help me oh ye savvy wise Jersey-city-ites and show me the way to find a safe affordable apartment where my car won't get jacked and where I can mostly take some safer form of transportation than me driving down busy streets. Yes, I am THAT bad of a driver... But I'm awesome at avoiding cows or deer crossing the street, just not parallel parking.
Any advice on which apartment complexes or areas that are the best but most affordable to move to, in or near Jersey City?
I'm a 30-something, single woman from a farming community in Idaho where people can leave their cars unlocked with the keys in the engine and their smartphones in plain sight on their dashboards without having a lick of trouble and the only gunshots you hear are farmers taking out voles or jackrabbits on their land.
I'm moving to the Jersey City area for work with a brand new car which I'm lucky that I drive decent between tractors but haven't seen much heavy traffic in my life.
So, if you can't tell by that how clueless I am about major cities little lone Jersey City, then let me tell you: I am CLUELESS.
Help me oh ye savvy wise Jersey-city-ites and show me the way to find a safe affordable apartment where my car won't get jacked and where I can mostly take some safer form of transportation than me driving down busy streets. Yes, I am THAT bad of a driver... But I'm awesome at avoiding cows or deer crossing the street, just not parallel parking.
You're right that you're clueless.
1st of all, you need to change that suburban American mindset. You don't need to live within 15-20min of your work location. In Jersey City, you don't need a brand new car unless you rent somewhere that you can park. Just about every street in JC has some type of alternate side parking and it is very difficult to park anywhere reliably. Just wait til the snow comes and your brand new car is packed in by all the ice and snow and you have to move it or you get a ticket.
Jersey City ain't a cheap area to move into unless you had connections. Rent won't be cheap for you and if you can't make compromises it will be very pricey with your requirements.
You are better off looking at other cheaper NJ towns that you can easily hop on a bus or NJ transit and get into JC.
1st of all, you need to change that suburban American mindset. You don't need to live within 15-20min of your work location. In Jersey City, you don't need a brand new car unless you rent somewhere that you can park. Just about every street in JC has some type of alternate side parking and it is very difficult to park anywhere reliably. Just wait til the snow comes and your brand new car is packed in by all the ice and snow and you have to move it or you get a ticket.
Jersey City ain't a cheap area to move into unless you had connections. Rent won't be cheap for you and if you can't make compromises it will be very pricey with your requirements.
You are better off looking at other cheaper NJ towns that you can easily hop on a bus or NJ transit and get into JC.
I don't often agree with vision33r, but I agree with every word of this.
OP, you're not in Kansas anymore. Don't live in JC until you've experienced it a bit first. That brand new car will be looking pretty beat after a year on the JC streets, if it's not stolen first.
Where will you be working so we can help find you a place to live?
Ditch the car. Rent a 1-bedroom in downtown Jersey City and walk to work, use PATH to get in and out of NYC when you want, use zipcar when you need to get away to a rural place for an afternoon.
If you get rid of the car you can subtract the payments, insurance, parking, gas, maintenance, and inevitable parking tickets from your budget and maybe get a nicer apartment than you thought you could afford otherwise.
Affordable would be an apartment, utilities, cable, parking, and Internet for total under 2500.
Depends on where you work.
Studios in Newport cost something like $1500 - $1800 I reckon. Could be wrong, but not by much. Gas & water (including unlimited hot water) included in your rent. You just pay for power + cable + Internet. Fios 25Mbps/200-something channels is about $100 a month. For power, me & wife are usually covered within $50 a month, when the AC/heating isn't required. In really hot/cold months with the wall units (yeah, most of them apartments there only have those, no central AC), the power bill would be $300 or so.
To secure a space in the garage, you've got to squeeze out another $200. But if you work in NYC, you don't even need a car. Walk 5 minutes or so to the PATH station and Bob is your uncle.
Lived there for a year. Nice place, only sorta expensive. Jersey City in general isn't cheap. One stone's throw from Manhattan, what do you expect? Now that you have to dwell there, why not go a little bit more un-cheap to make yourself cozier...
I lived in JC as a 30-something (married) girl for a year and loved it! Then we moved just a teensy bit south to Hoboken and I love it here, too! If you look outside of big buildings, you can definitely find something for 2500, but it likely won't come with parking.
Do you need to keep the car? Car insurance in NJ is quite a bit more expensive than where we lived before and you'll have to pay for a parking spot somewhere or deal with the crazy street parking (very hard to find, lots of rules) of JC.
But now that I've said the negative, there is so much POSITIVE to living in JC--so many good restaurants popping up every day, very international residents, nice bars to go out to, stone's throw from Manhattan but you still have the big box stores like Target and the mall right there.
My favorite areas of JC are Grove St, Hamilton Park and surrounds and Van Vorst park and surrounds, but you can't go wrong in the entire waterfront/grove st area. Feel free to ask any other questions!
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