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/\ I believe 150k a year income for a family of 4 is necessary to live and have a decent life on LI. If you can't make that money then either sacrifice or move.
First world problems. 150k? Thats insane. Not everyone is going to live in a mcmansion on the north shore. Plenty of people make it just fine on waaaaay less than that. Im as liberal as they come but it seems that everyone wants to be entitled to cheap housing . Long island was never intended for poor people. The roads and parkways and beaches and such were never designed to encourage the poor city people to come settle here. Its a place for the solidly middle class . Anyone can make it here by their own bootstraps but it will take sacrifice. You don't just wake up one day and have his and hers beemers parked in you driveway in dix hills center hall colonial .
While LI is expensive, I don't see people fleeing in droves. What other alternatives are there? Staten Island? Jersey? There's a $600k mini McMansion all over these areas with taxes $14k+
While LI is expensive, I don't see people fleeing in droves. What other alternatives are there? Staten Island? Jersey? There's a $600k mini McMansion all over these areas with taxes $14k+
There may be folks who cannot afford LI. One could say that about any place in the US. Given the tight housing market, it is obvious a great many people can afford Long Island. And do.
Always an illogical and easily refuted argument here when a citi data poster writes that he/she cannot afford to stay on Long Island (or have already left), and therefore Long Island is on the edge of economic collapse.
More logic and coherence in the witch hauntings, school teacher obsessions, and Long Island wildlife spotting threads.
There may be folks who cannot afford LI. One could say that about any place in the US. Given the tight housing market, it is obvious a great many people can afford Long Island. And do.
Always an illogical and easily refuted argument here when a citi data poster writes that he/she cannot afford to stay on Long Island (or have already left), and therefore Long Island is on the edge of economic collapse.
More logic and coherence in the witch hauntings, school teacher obsessions, and Long Island wildlife spotting threads.
My new neighbors moved here to Dutchess County from LI. Why? Because they couldn't afford the taxes any longer. They were paying 18K a year. Now they pay about 7K. That to them is a bargain. My neighbor behind me, from Queens, they'd paid over 14K for taxes, now 6.5 K for a generic 1600sq ft raised ranch. But what has now happened here because of a LARGE influx from the lower counties and LI is that our taxes have gone through the roof.
We built our home in 1992. It's paid off. Our taxes at that time were $1600 a year. Fast forward to now and all the influx from down state, our taxes are now 8K. Both of us work locally. 2008 saw many long time residents here lose jobs. Our new norm is to be underpaid. We have officially given up the ghost and decided to sell our home and leave NYS. It now shows that just to rent an apartment here you need to earn 82K a year for the median income. I can assure you, working in a local school district as bus dispatcher, if my spouse died tomorrow, I couldn't even rent a place as I only make 37K a year. Taxpayers say our salaries are over paid. We've been priced out of here and it's sad.
The high taxes just get worse with each new wave that comes north to escape even higher taxes from down below. When does it all come crashing down across the state? It can't keep going this way.
but like we found out when we thought about retiring to the pocono's where our 2nd home was , living there can cost you more in other ways .
one of the ways it can end up costing you is if you wanted to work a bit say after you retired . in pa there was nothing but low wage jobs in my field if i was even lucky enough to get one .
staying here in queens was a big plus . now that i retired i teach at my old company 2 days a month and get hundreds of dollars a day for doing that .
i am entertaining their offer to come in once a week if we are home . once i retired i had a flood of offers from competitors too .
the other issue is while we are fine in a two bedroom apartment in queens because all the kids are out , we needed a 3000 sq ft house in pa since now all the kids and 4 grand kids stay over . housing actually cost us more for the pocono home .
that offsets any extra costs of living here compared to pa by a wide margin .
plus we get :
a public transportation system in case we can't drive
every store type locally
the finest choices in doctors ,specialists and medical facility's
endless things to do daily as one thing you have in retirement is time .
since with us time cost money the ability to pick up nice money by working a very limited amount of time is very nice .
once we started thinking with our retirement hat on cheaper was not going to be better for us in the end .
if we ever decide to leave and go to a cheaper area we get nice fat social security checks from earning those higher wages here in nyc and long island which go with us regardless of where we go .
the fact the real estate we sold was worth so much more here was a huge bonus too from living here .. locals in cheaper area's rarely end up even close to the wealth the transplants have from higher cost areas . we saw that in the area's when we had the house in pa .
the higher home costs in the more costly area's like nyc , westchester and long island tend to force more money as a percentage of income in to housing which acts as a forced savings down the road .
as i pointed out above a 600k house that goes up a mere 3% a year is a whole lot more money when you sell than a 150k house going up 3% a year .
Last edited by mathjak107; 09-11-2016 at 05:12 AM..
My new neighbors moved here to Dutchess County from LI. Why? Because they couldn't afford the taxes any longer. They were paying 18K a year. Now they pay about 7K. That to them is a bargain. My neighbor behind me, from Queens, they'd paid over 14K for taxes, now 6.5 K for a generic 1600sq ft raised ranch. But what has now happened here because of a LARGE influx from the lower counties and LI is that our taxes have gone through the roof.
The high taxes just get worse with each new wave that comes north to escape even higher taxes from down below. When does it all come crashing down across the state? It can't keep going this way.
Increased taxes simply from an influx of people? Are the decision-makers raising taxes simply because these people can afford it now? Is that what's really happening?
Increased taxes simply from an influx of people? Are the decision-makers raising taxes simply because these people can afford it now? Is that what's really happening?
There isn't any good explanation as to why it's jumped. Yes, a big part of it is the taxes started rising a LOT when McMansions started to be built here. It still amazes me. I can't understand why someone needs a 3000+ Sqft home and it sits dark until after 7 because they have spent all day commuting to NYC. Add to it Toll Brother's saw $$$ after 9/11 and they built a 900 unit community a combination of townhomes, houses and condos. House originally sold for 550K+, now you can get that same house for 400K.
The taxes went up around the same time and haven't stopped. There's money rolling in from the people who moved here. It's not the locals that can buy these places, unless they are in the upper tiers at the school districts here or commute themselves. Someone has to live locally and work the schools, medical offices, retail, food and other business. But I can assure you, the blue collar worker here isn't able to afford it much longer.
The district I work for pays the lowest out of all of Dutchess. They can't get new teachers fresh out of school. Why? Because now rents are too high and they can't afford to rent in the city limits because it's now known as "Brooklyn" North. So now all these new people move in, our services needs have risen, taxes have gone way up, and the infrastructure can't handle it all either. My neighbors all make well over 100K. We can't live on 50K. That's sad.
The only equalizer to all these taxes is a recession. I know people have been predicting it will come soon, the election is a good indicator. I believe the recession will be somewhere after the 1st year of the new president. It maybe bad news if someone is buying right now in a heated market.
When it gets here the housing market will start nosediving then it may take years for local govt to adjust the taxes of properties.
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