Not to mention no medical insurance, retirement, 401k, etc.
I worry about airBnB. I have friends who are renting out a basement apartment and the fire marshall would have fits. There are two ground level doors to the outside but the bedrooms do not have large enough windows to qualify as a legal means of egress. Something I would always ask about and look for if I was a renter!
Thus far, we have always stayed at hotels instead of Airbnb or other rentals. We have stayed at pensions in Europe as well as one B&B in Penssylvania Dutch Country. H is much more comfortable at hotels and I like having a happy spouse! Oh yeah, we’ve never caught Uber or Lyft or others, but have used taxis and airport shuttles and rental cars.
Boarded up, graffiti covered buildings are certainly a turnoff
@greenwitch – I agree with your concern about Airbnb. I would not like the idea of strangers having access to the same building I live in, so I am happy it was not a thing during my NYC days.
@Chardo, how much could you see from the train? I have taken that train. The elevated tracks are covered most of the way so you can’t see anything, and the station is under a viaduct. I have driven that way many, many times (although on top of the viaduct, not under it) and although most of it is not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, it’s a clean, busy working class area of Brooklyn.
Also, East New York is a huge neighborhood and the railroad tracks are on the northern edge of it. My daughter has a very good friend from high school now at Brown whose mother, a high school principal, owns a nice little house in East New York. But it’s a couple of miles from the LIRR tracks.She has another friend from a citywide chorus who lives in yet another area of East New York, again, far from the LIRR tracks. Her father is a taxi driver and supports his family. She and her older siblings are all college students now.
You can clearly see the graffiti covered buildings as you arrive and depart the train station. I’ll admit my opinions on East New York are probably clouded by my father in law’s stories. Maybe the next generation will be nicer than the previous. Still, I suspect it may be a little too far from Manhattan to become the next hot area.
I agree that most of the neighborhood is too far from most of Manhattan for major gentrification. Many subway lines cross East New York but it’s a long ride with many stops on most of the lines between East New York and Manhattan above 14th St. On the other hand, there are plenty of businesses setting up shop and employing upscale young New Yorkers in downtown Brooklyn and environs that aren’t so far.
My first year resident D. did not even apply to residency in NYC. And she applied very widely - to 110 places. Basically she skipped only very few locations and one of them was NYC. First, she does not care for it, second she knows about cost of living very well. Her big brother bought apartment in Brooklyn for $163k some years ago and now it is $1.5 mil. So, I do not think that you can buy at decent location for below than $1.5 mil. While $1.5 will buy an OK place in NYC, it is nothing spectacular!
^^Patently false.
You can certainly get decent housing for less than $1M, but it won’t be in a trendy neighborhood. None of these places going for $1M+ are spectacular if you campare it to what it gets you anywhere else besides NYC (except maybe SV).
You can get some tear downs in decent neighborhoods for about $1M in Honolulu. Just saying there are expensive housing neighborhoods in areas outside of NYC and SV.
One of my cousins jokingly posted a real estate as for a simple little condo in Vail. It was $1810/square foot! Crazy for a place you probably don’t even want to live in all year.
Oh, Honolulu is completely out of my league. I may settle for a shack in Kauai or the Big Island.
“Patently false.” - well, if real facts are false, then I have lied. But the question is “what is not patently false?”. I guess, a fantasy is not a lie. Then fantasies is much better resource for the decision making than facts that people live with right now…
One thing we keep in mind is convenience to major airports and availability of medical care. As we get older (or those of us who have loved ones with medical issues), these considerations are of increasing importance. Living in a more rustic, rural area makes getting quality medical care more challenging. As it is, I have to travel to get medical care beyond whatever our local MDs can provide.
You can certainly get decent housing in NYC in many trendy parts of NYC, but it won’t be as spacious as the $1M+ places. But decent? Sure.
I’ve got a 25 yr old software engineer who is thinking about buying a condo in San Francisco. I am completely at loos with how to be of any help. She makes twice as much as her father or I ever have and the condos she is looking at are 3 times the cost of our home. Any suggestions on where to direct her for guidance? I don’t even know where to start.
@my3girls I always found older, more experienced and established coworkers with whom I had a good rapport to be helpful and I would pay it forward as I became that more experienced and established coworker.
I heard DS’s GF has been participating in some “bidding war” in order to get some condo (maybe?) and she failed to succeed in it. Look like she may have aborted this task (She was advised by her parents to do this) likely due to the lack of the time. Not sure (and not care) about what the price range of the house/condo she’s looking at. I heard there are just too many cash buyers in that region so her bid could be not competitive.)