I hear a lot about Manhattan and Brooklyn. Very little about Queens?
What is Queens like?
Young people have been moving to Long Island City, Astoria and Woodside for at least 20 years. These areas have had major gentrification and re-development. As you head further east into Queens, you have more single or 2 family homes and they tend to appeal more to families. According to the article those areas are seeing a resurgence, too, but I would not necessarily say that Elmhurst would appeal to young people or the crowd that is moving to Brooklyn/ or from Manhattan. Astoria and Long Island City have the “cool” factor, Jackson Heights not so much. They may be good neighborhoods for investment though.
Queens is huge with many very different neighborhoods, as is Brooklyn. Just to cite the name of the borough is like talking about “California.”
It’s so funny. My mother grew up in Astoria when it was an Italian/Greek/Puerto Rican ghetto. She would love this!
Yes, the outer boroughs are being gentrified and sought after more and more. Some people prefer the smaller scale too. My D2 had a chance for a reasonably priced apartment on the upper east side and she chose Bushwick instead.
Long Island city is very popular with young lawyers. They move there and bike to work in Manhattan. Astoria is very popular with less affluent young professionals.
They have to go somewhere. Brooklyn has become as pricey as Manhattan. My cousin bought a condo in Brooklyn about 10-12 years ago for $500K. It’s now worth over $2.3 million. Yikes.
It really depends on where in Brooklyn. There are plenty of close-in neighborhoods where you can spend less and get a lot more space than in Manhattan.
I raised my kid in brownstone Brooklyn and still live here. Although I am in Manhattan all the time, it’s a pleasure to come home to less density, less noise, less traffic, more light. It’s accessible and diverse and interesting on its own, just less frenetic than most of Manhattan. My kid went to school pre-k through 8th grade in Manhattan and was there several times a week for a city-wide chorus throughout high school. She loves Manhattan but loves Brooklyn more.
Jersey City is much more convenient to Manhattan than Queens and has better housing stock and shorter commutes.
Again it depends on where in Queens and where in Manhattan. Long Island City and Astoria are just a few subway stops from midtown.
Jersey City Is convenient if you are headed into the city to a location on the Path–so 34th and below on the west side. Otherwise you need to switch to subways. Astoria is a close subway ride to east side and midtown.
This implies that only until lately have people become priced out of Manhattan.
As a native NYer, I know the many really great outer borough neighborhoods that young people striving to be cool hipsters aren’t choosing to live in (mainly because they don’t even explore them). It’s crazy to me how some are choosing parts of Bushwick over Brooklyn Heights, the Upper East or West side. Many parts of Queens and huge well established sections of Brooklyn fall under this category–safe, good housing stock but not enough hipster vibe.
I’m sure this will change around a bit when more young people in these neighborhoods have children and realize the sorry shape of many of the schools and parks At that point a chunk of couples will explore suburbs while others will head back to wherever they came from originally.
LIC and Astoria have better transport than either Williamsburg or Greenpoint. And they’re closer to Midtown.
You do get more for your $$ in Jersey City.
D1 ( mid twenties) is in contract for a place in the UES Manhattan. She is not a hipster, haha. Doesn’t care about being cool. Just about convenience, comfort and resale.
She use to live ( summers during college as an intern) in Long Island City with an ex. It was his place developed by his father. It was very convenient to where she worked in Manhattan and had many restaurants, bars, etc. around. It seemed like a good place to be as an alternative to Manhattan. Her ex thought it was the best place to live.
Their breakup was not pleasant. Bad for her and hard for us, M & D. So now she is buying her own place in Manhattan as a 27 yr. old on her own and he is still living in Queens in a place his Dad sold to him. Hahaha. Just a story with many details left out. But gratification just the same.
Rents are much higher in Brooklyn Heights than in Bushwick. And trusty L train runs across Bushwick, through Williamsburg, under the East River and directly across Manhattan on 14th St. from First Ave. in the East Village to Eighth Ave. at the border of Greenwich Village and Chelsea. Not everyone works in midtown.
Mind you, I am no great fan of Bushwick, but it all depends on what you are looking for. I’m old! Bushwick is not for me. But it’s a reasonably close-in area of Brooklyn with interesting restaurants and bars for 20-somethings where you can still find parking and also get to Manhattan on the subway in considerably less than half an hour.
Williamsburg and Greenpoint happen to have some pretty good elementary schools but Bushwick, not so much. The young people renting there don’t have kids, by and large. It all depends.
My niece and her H and kids live in Riverdale–the Bronx–a couple of blocks walk from the end of the subway, across from the park/Botanical Garden/etc. It is a great, convenient neighborhood, and amazingly cheap. It isn
t a fashionable “scene,” like Brooklyn, but it is a great place to live.
There have been ads up in Brooklyn for years suggesting that Brooklyn is “over” and Queens is the cool place to be (nI think Jackson Heights was specifically mentioned). Selfishly, I keep hoping that will be the case! The traffic and subway overcrowding in Brooklyn when one is trying to get into Manhattan are fierce. Seems like the Borough has grown massively in population with little government planning to handle the booming demand on municipal services.
But as other commenters have said, Queens is incredibly diverse. There are a myriad of choices in terms of the housing stock, the diversity of population (money, race, ethnicity, religion, and anything else you could think of), the convenience to Manhattan, the quality of life, it is really hard to compare.
I guess if I was looking now, I’d be looking in some parts of northeastern Queens. Either that or some parts of the Bronx. Longer commutes, but there are some nice places to live.
Alas, the subways in Queens are extremely crowded during rush hours. I worked in Jackson Heights and it’s ok if your destination is midtown, much less so if you work in Manhattan south of 23rd St. It is, indeed, very diverse, as is Bushwick, with many residents from all over Latin America. JH also has a large Bangladeshi population with restaurants and stores to serve them. The population is denser than in the hot neighborhoods in Brooklyn, with more apartment buildings (many coops with interior gardens) and fewer 1-, 2- and 3-family houses.
I have a friend who was priced out of Astoria (lived there for years) as the hipsters move in. She’s now in Flushing. My parents live in Bayside and that is still a reasonable priced areas to live. Very quiet, good for raising a family.
D lives in Brooklyn. Lovely safe neighborhood with restaurants, shops,public transportation etc - but NOT one of the well known hipster areas. A few of her friends live there, but she prefers it to “stay under the radar” as she and her fiance pay a very reasonable rent on a nice and roomy apartment.