I (still) live in New York City - Ask Me Anything

[allfurcoatnoknickers]

I did an AMA four years ago and thought it might be fun to do another one since I'm seeing more and NYC advice threads popping up on the Holiday board.
Anyone got any questions for a current Manhattanite? I love to play tour guide 😊.

I'm also married to a born and raised New Yorker, and we have a four year old in elementary school and a 5 month old baby, so feel free to ask away and pregnancy, birth, maternity leave and schools in the US. I see a lot of misconceptions on here I'd be happy to chat about.

@TomAllenWife I still subscribe to the NYT although I left NY many years ago. From the occasional glance at the Realty sections, I doubt $500K would buy more than a shoebox studio, and definitely not in Manhattan. A dear friend had a small brownstone in Fort Greene, Brooklyn in the early 80s, then worth about $80k after a lot of sweat investment from them, which would cost roughly $2.5m now, but Ft Greene was a very rough/high crime area in those days.

@allfurcoatnoknickers will have a more up-to-the-minute opinion.

You have to understand that the UK is a low wage economy, and that it has been poor compared to the US for 40 years. When I left in early 1986, I took a 50% paycut. I earned $38k in the US, and returned to London on £18k, although the difference was masked by exchange rates. My pleasant two bed apartment in Jersey city cost $280 per month, including heating and hot water.

@allfurcoatnoknickers oh wow I'm suprised at what you can get
I thought everything would be in excess of $1m

Love to dream about living there one day!

What is a co/op?

I do wonder where the normal people live though. For example, the teachers who work in the OP child’s school? If they have families where do they live? Miles away and have a huge commute?

@Papyrophile I would have to take a 50-60% paycut if I moved back to the UK, and that's if I moved to London.

@TomAllenWife explanation here: streeteasy.com/blog/what-is-a-co-op-apartment-nyc-guide/#ib-toc-anchor-0

Basically you own shares in an apartment building. Each apartment = a certain number of shares.

Great thread - thank you! We travel out on Saturday and I am very excited. I used to work there many moons ago pre children and haven’t been back since!

Quick question for @allfurcoatnoknickers i have told my 3 (age 14, 11 and 8) that we are not packing Halloween costumes and will get some there but am now having a panic that shops will be sold out. What do you think and where is the best place to get them? Thanks Hugely in advance!!!

@DanceMumTaxi I have a long answer and a short answer to that! More later because I'm about to do the school run...

The area that is commutable into NYC is huge @DanceMumTaxi . London is big, but you can triple the commuter-scale into NYC, and probably fall a bit short. Back in the 80s, I walked to the station (about 18 minutes) took a train to Manhattan (about 10 minutes) and walked across to the office (another 20 minutes). It cost about 25c, then.

@Teeheehee1579 order online from target and do In-store pickup. You can thank me later . Costumes won't sell out but the shops will be bonkers crowded the closer you get to Halloween.

Thanks @allfurcoatnoknickers - if it’s ok may I ask some more questions? I’m Irish culturally so love community, friendly neighbours, community events, neighbours calling in for tea etc, is there anywhere like that in NYC? I see block parties in films, cook outs etc

@DanceMumTaxi Professionals, including nurses and teachers, are much better paid in the US. They are expected to have qualifications, and the medical system does not operate on the lashed-together, jury-rigged shipwreck that is the NHS, because you personally meet the cost of your care or your insurance does (paid by your employer). It is very hard on the very poor, but there is Medicare to fund old people and Medicaid for the unemployed. And either is as good as the NHS, but it hits low paid employed people hardest because they fall between the safety nets.

Thank you so much!!

Medicare and Medicaid pick up the pieces. That said, NY has several Health Maintenance Organisations, which are a mix-up. I joined an early one, and it was a bit like UK general practice.

Highline is one of my fave places in nyc, I ran along it at night recently and stopped at artichoke for pizza.

This may be way too personal for you but what industries are you and your husband in and what’s your combine salary? I think nyc is the only place I’d push to move to in my global company. I love it

@Horriblewoman this was mentioned earlier, maybe page 2 or 3. They earn lots, over $400,000 combined.

@Teeheehee1579 I just walked past a Halloween shop and the line was half way around the block and they were operating a one in-one put policy like a nightclub

@lavender2023
People in the US who have children are picky about where they buy because if you're sending your children to public school, where you buy determines where your children will go, and there can be huge differences in outcomes in different school districts. If you're going to be paying a mortgage and paying property taxes (and you will, if you want to live in an area with amenities and good schools), you'll want to get your money's worth.

Also, buying a flat / condo means paying both property taxes, which can be high, and condo association dues, which can also be high, and you'll never see those dues again.

Renting can make a lot of sense in a place where your rights as a tenant are pretty strong. It means you can avail of excellent schools and other amenities while your landlord spreads out the multifamily property taxes among the rents of all the units of your building.

Rents are also much more responsive to the market than mortgages are. Rents stagnated in my local big city during covid but have risen since. Rents where I live rose during covid as people abandoned the city and flocked to an area that had pleasant, leafy suburban streets for running and walking, and parks for picnics and walking dogs and running small children in. Rent rises are usually capped at a certain percentage of existing rent. You are not likely to see your rent double or rise to the tune of hundreds of £££ or $$$ in other words. Long term renting can save you money therefore, and it offers stability.

@DanceMumTaxi Ok, short answer:

When people say NYC often I get the sense they mean Manhattan. That's like living in Zone 1 in London. So like London, teachers teaching in say, Holland Park, are probably not living in Holland Park but commuting in from somewhere else.

You could live in the very nice, safe, affordable, middle class areas of Astoria
or Sunnyside and be at DS's school in 30-40 minutes on the subway. Equally you could live in Sunnyside or Astoria and teach at their (excellent) schools.

A 30-40 minute commute is pretty standard.

Also like PPs said, teachers are reasonably well paid. More on that here: teachnyc.net/about-our-schools/salary-and-benefits#:~:text=For%202023%2D2024%2C%20starting%20salaries,teaching%20experience%20will%20earn%20%2470%2C711.

There are lots of more affordable areas in NYC - most of them just aren't in Manhattan, but even in Manhattan there are a few: Washington Heights, Inwood and Hudson Heights spring to mind.

The same applies in the UK too for flats. I pay a service charge of £150 per month for my 1930s flat with a communal garden (residents manage the building and my DH is in the residents management company). A lot of people prefer to buy houses for that reason but if you work in central London and work in the city at least 3 days a week , it's a bit of a no - win situation as the commuter fares for a town outside London which is in the same price range as a house in the town would be £400 per month at least (£800 for a couple) and you would probably run a car as well (roughly £300 per month) so that in itself is more than my mortgage currently.

I do live in a good area with schools - London has a lot of good schools and 50% of London homes are flats so you would have your pick. What a lot of people do if they can't afford a flat or house in an area with schools is they buy a flat in a gentrifying area and sell to move to the good school area when the kids are of school age- does that not happen. I don't suppose you have first time buyer incentives. When I bought in 2019, there was a stamp duty discount/no stamp duty for the first 300k for houses 500k and below. In London that is apartment budget. So if you waited till you could afford the house you would be waiting a long time and not benefitting from the discount. Stamp duty in the UK is the only property tax you would pay really as council tax also needs to be paid by renters. Yes I forgot that in the USA, renters don't need to pay property tax which massively swings the balance!

It's interesting that stable long term rental is an option in the USA as in the UK we are often led to believe that living conditions for the people on the lower rungs on the socio-economic ladder are much worse and surely that would include housing. In the UK, you are in private rental unless you are very poor (and lucky!) And get allocated a council house but only an option in London for those who are very vulnerable or have lots of kids. As an example, I just saw a rental listing for a flat in my development for £1900. My mortgage is £1020 (probably would rise to £1400 next year as we don't have 30 year mortgages here, most fix for 5 years but for me that is almost entirely offset by DH only having £5k left on his student loan balance so that £400 per month that currently goes to student loan payments will now go to mortgage). When I first bought the flat in 2019 the market rent for a flat in the development was £1400 and then it rose to £1600 during the pandemic. And then my neighbours left a few months ago cos the landlord raised the rent to £1800 and has since rented it out to 3 university students. Now I suppose it's £1900, would probably be £2k next year. This is a 35% increase over 4 years which I suppose doesn't look so bad on paper but I have had the same mortgage payment in all that time. Landlord has a notice period of two months and long leases are rare.

On our New York trip we gave the DCs spending money but they didn’t spend it all because they realised a lot of the time it would be cheaper to buy the same thing at home. DC2 tried things on then went straight to the UK website and got item same item delivered to the house. A lot of the food seemed more expensive as well (and I’m a Waitrose shopper!). I hadn’t noticed such a big difference on previous trips and I know I would have because I was much more skint then than I am now.

@Greatbigfluffytrousers Inflation is out of control right now. Our bill for food shopping has gone through the roof.

I don't think clothes etc. have been cheaper in NY since about 2017. I remember going back to England in 2018 and going hog-wild in Whistles because it was so much cheaper.

@Persimmon23 I've definitely found community in both areas I've lived in. Back when I was in LIC, I knew lots of my neighbours and we were constantly in and out of each others apartments. Our building also had common spaces and two roof decks and you were pretty much guaranteed to run into someone you knew if you went out there in the evening.

Where I live now, we're not in and out of each others apartments as much, but I was at a Halloween block party last weekend and a big gang of us are meeting up to Trick or Treat with our children and babies on Tuesday. My phone is constantly pinging with invites to this playground or that meetup or an "FYI we're getting coffee this morning!" And you can be pretty much guaranteed to run into people you know at the park.

Also just for fun, every week Curbed do a round up of "worth it" listings: https://www.curbed.com/article/best-nyc-apartments-for-rent-right-now.html?utmmedium=s1&utmmsource=fb&utmcampaign=nym&fbclid=IwAR399dhMzMEbEE2jSVwxc9do6V0TiWdTAP8bbSm00tQWrpn9oaVwfH-p88aemAYcIfee_4E3A9X7lAQsbdWE9KCLPtHTmUi9KgD7pOi6jvr892vH9sC4wUeg7pCF5vtvM

Ooh nice!

@DanceMumTaxi Longer answer:

Lots if people in NYC are not paying market rate for various reasons. These include:

• Living in a rent stablised apartment where your rent can only go up 2% per year. There are a decent number of these in the city and tax incentives for developers to build new ones. I used to live in one - it was fab.

• Living in a rent controlled apartment. These are rare as hens teeth. Applies to apartments where the tenant has been living there since 1971. Rent can be raised up to 7.5% every 2 years. These apartments can be passed on to family members that have lived there 2+ years, but if the original tenant dies, they go back on the free market.

• Mitchell Lama and Income restricted co-ops. These are apartments you buy, but there's a cap on how much they cost and a cap on how much you can earn to be eligible to live in the buildings.

• Affordable housing. These apartments are applied for via a lottery, they're usually in super luxe buildings where there's an "affordable" portion of apartments with an income cap for residents. Developers get a massive tax break for these. They're competitive, but it's not super rare to get one.

• Getting your hands on a place pre-gentrification. Parts of NYC have always been spendy but a lot of it was rough AF well into the 90s and early 2000s. For example the area around the Highline was really dodgy until about 2010. I've got a fair few friends who have properly around here because they bought when the area was still properly grotty.

• Projects. These are NYC council estates. Lots of "normal" people live in them.

@allfurcoatnoknickers thanks that’s really interesting. Didn’t realise there was so much affordable housing. Especially the projects bit, I always thought they were really rough but they must not be.