Moving to condo close to NYC ideas?

DonnaL
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:29:18 +0000

At the time we finally sold it a little more than a year ago, the real estate taxes on the house in Glen Ridge (in Essex County, approx. 12 miles due west of the Lincoln Tunnel) where my ex and I used to live and my son grew up – your standard 4-bedroom colonial on 1/8 of an acre – were about $16,000. (It was actually close to $18,000, but my ex successfully challenged the last assessment.)

10 minutes to cross the GW Bridge? Ha, ha; very funny. I can see the GW Bridge from all the windows of the apartment where I now live in upper Manhattan. Maybe that’s true at 4 am on a weeknight, or at 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Depending. Otherwise, no chance. And the same is true of the Lincoln Tunnel. Through which I commuted daily for 23 years (for 13 years from Glen Ridge and 10 from Clifton [where the building I lived in, and my living room window, could be seen in the background of one Sopranos episode], and spent an average of an hour every morning (sometimes as much as 90 minutes to 2 hours) traveling the 12 miles by car or DeCamp or NJ Transit bus. Coming home at night was just as bad, especially at rush hour or if it rained. Or drizzled. There was one winter night I’ll never forget, when there was an ice storm and it took almost 4 hours to drive home that short distance.

Never again! I now have a very predictable 40 minute commute on the subway, door to door. On which I can sit and read in the morning, and on the way home at night, and not have to worry about traffic. Or driving. Or being on a standing-room only bus. Ugh.

Oh, yes, don’t forget that NJ has the highest car insurance rates in the U.S. The annual premium for my unexceptional Toyota Corolla was almost $2,000. It’s half that in NYC, where the rates aren’t exactly low.

Suffice it to say I"m not a huge fan of New Jersey these days, except when my son happens to be in the state.