Battery Park City Lower Manhattan
Battery Park City is a planned community of roughly 16,000 that is set along the Hudson River. It is widely considered one of the best places to live in New York City just close enough to the hustle and bustle of the big city, yet distant enough as to enjoy some peace and quiet at the waterfront.
Cost of living is reflective of the steep prices of NYC, with the going rate for an average home playing well above the $1 million mark, often ranging between $1,200,000 and $1,500,000. Same case with the rent prices, which average $2,969 a month.
But that is the price you get to pay for plenty of green parks that offer more than just relaxation. Kids can ride bikes without the obvious dangers that come with riding in a city. Busy parents can let off some steam by running on the esplanade. And pets can accompany their owners to the pet-friendly parks.
Crime here is virtually non-existent, and the neighbourhood promises fantastic views of, among others, the One World Trade , the Hudson, and Lady Liberty herself.
For Waterfront Without Tears Carmel Ny
Population: 34,000
Median list price: $409,900
Risk-averse New Yorkers fleeing the city will probably think twice before heading to a coastal community. But if you hanker to live on or near the water without worrying about losing your home to flooding, consider the Putnam County town of Carmel with its many lakes, pools and streams.
As Lawrence Zacks, an associate with Re/max Classic Realty, in Somers, N.Y., pointed out, You dont get a huge storm surge on a lake. You get a three-foot wave.
Carmel is about 50 miles north of the George Washington Bridge and includes the hamlets of Carmel, Mahopac and Mahopac Falls. The home of several lakes and 140 freshwater ponds, it is largely contained within the New York City watershed, which works to keep the region and the tap water that flows from its reservoirs pristine.
The lakes, which were conjured or enlarged from dammed rivers when the area was developed as a resort in the early 20th century, continue to be fishing and boating playgrounds. But with highway access and a shrinking world, the population has changed character. Most of the lake communities have gone from 100 percent summer people to 50 to 80 percent year-rounders, Mr. Zacks said.
The waterfront properties currently for sale include a one-bedroom condo on Lake Mahopac, a 583-acre lake that is not part of the watershed and allows motorboats. The asking price is $299,900 with a monthly homeowners fee of $430 and annualtaxes of $2,797.
How We Calculated Where To Live
Gus Wezerek and Yaryna Serkez are graphics editors for Opinion. They have lived in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Columbia, Mo., among other places.
Picking a place to live is one of lifes most consequential decisions. As the urban studies theorist Richard Florida wrote, the place we choose to live can determine the income we earn, the people we meet, the friends we make, the partners we choose and the options available to our children and families.
To make that decision easier, we created a quiz using data for almost 17,000 places across more than 30 metrics. Realtor.com shared housing prices with us Yelp contributed tallies of restaurants, music venues and gay bars and AccuWeather helped us collect statistics on temperature, sunshine and snowfall, to name just a few of our sources.
Take the quiz
We want the quiz to be useful to anyone whos thinking about moving not just affluent, highly educated people who are working remotely because of the Covid pandemic. Weve included data on affordability, jobs and abortion rights, which could be relevant to young people deciding where to start their careers. And weve quantified health care quality, snowfall and crime rates criteria that might be top of mind for retirees.
The quiz is a starting point, not a crystal ball. Places are shaped by the people who live in them, and people are full of surprises that no algorithm can capture.
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Best Places To Live In Upstate New York
If youre looking for some of the best places to live in New York State, we have plenty. From quaint towns in the country to up-and-coming metro areas, Upstate New York offers a variety of landscapes and environments to choose from. Are you looking to raise a family? Pursue a job opportunity? Plan for retirement? No matter what your reason may be for moving to Upstate New York, there are plenty of options for everyone.
Here are some of the best Upstate NY towns to live inbeginning with Western New York.
College Town = Excitment
Colleges with tens of thousands of students gives Central New York a great vibe. We love it when students from around the world flood back every autumn, bringing energy and optimism. We love that many stay to start businesses and careers or remember our quality of life and come back to put down roots. We love how young entrepreneurs enrich our work with innovation, insight, and invention.
Our seven CNY counties have more than two dozen private and public colleges and universities. They give us one of the largest concentrations of students in America. It means we have an equally large concentration of professors, researchers, authors, artists, scientists, engineers, and guest speakers enriching our lives. In CNY, it’s convenient to earn an advanced degree.
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What Are The People And Culture Like In New York
NYC is a global city and a melting pot for people from all over the world. Pretty much every type of culture is represented and celebrated in some way, through cuisine, nightlife, art, music, festivals, theatre and beyond. In the further reaches of upstate New York, theres an incredible amount of nature and wildlife, and the ability to live an off-the-grid lifestyle is that kind of thing appeals to you. Hunting is popular up here, with nearly 700,000 New Yorkers partaking in the sport, as well as around 50,000 non-residents.
The demographics throughout the state are fairly mixed both culturally and racially. There are even some Indian Reservations here, as well as some small communities of Amish people. When it comes to politics, the empire state tends to lean pretty liberal, thanks largely to NYC and the surrounding areas in the south. That being said, upstate New York has a high percentage of conservative residents, and the Republic party tends to get a lot of votes.
Is New York A Good State To Live In Or Retire To
New York was the third most populated US state until 2014 when Florida overtook the third position and New York dropped to the fourth. Despite millions of state dollars recently invested in improving Upstate New York, citizens continue to move out of the state from those counties.
Every state has pros and cons to living there. Whats important to most people is whether there are more pros than cons for them personally. One person may consider the weather in New York State a plus because they love a place with 4 distinct seasons. Another individual may decide to move out of the state because the winters are too cold and dreary for them. This is especially be true of many who have reached retirement age and have decided to move for warmer winter weather.
I must disclose that I grew up in Pennsylvania and have fond memories of winter trips to New York State for skiing. I would arrange vacations with many of my relatives and we would travel mainly to the Lake Placid New York Area. Why Lake Placid? Because there is world-class skiing at nearby Whiteface Mountain, plus all kinds of other winter sports and other activities available for those who dont relish the thought of speeding down a steep snowy mountain on two sticks. The Lake Placid area was the site of not one but two Winter Olympics in 1932 and again in 1980.
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New York City Has Some Of The Worlds Most Exciting Venues For Live Music
Beacon Theatre, Village Vanguard and other standard-bearers hold it down in Manhattan, while outer-borough newcomers boast state-of-the-art digs: Brooklyn Steel is one of the best larger rooms in the city, with unobstructed views, a strong sound system and copious bars. In Bushwick, Elsewhere is a mini performing-arts center in its own right, with two indoor music rooms, a rooftop stage and an art gallery, all of which regularly host indie-rock concerts and dance parties that last into the wee hours.
Local Legend Patti Smith Is Working To Revive The Rockaways
Punk icon Patti Smith is now a Rockaway resident, and she advocates for the continued restoration of the community through art. Six years later, the peninsula is still dealing with the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, and to raise awareness of the ongoing issues there, Smith has created work for the annual Rockaway! public art project, put on by MoMA PS1 and the Rockaway Artists Alliance, with her friend and Rockaway neighbor Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1.
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Whats Behind The Match Percentages
Places can score zero to 10 points for each metric. To calculate each places match percentage, we add up its scores across metrics that a reader has selected and divide by the total number of possible points. If a reader selects the checkboxes for trees and mountains, a place with a score of 6 for trees and 8 for mountains will be a 70 percent match.
Places with no data for a metric receive zero points. For starred metrics, we double the number of points scored and available to make them count twice as much toward the match percentage.
One challenge we faced was deciding how to handle outliers. Say that a place experiences an extreme amount of snow, 100 inches every winter, so we give it a snowiness score of 10. Should a place that experiences 50 inches of snow still a very white winter get only a 5?
For many metrics, our solution was to cap the underlying ranges at the fifth and 95th population-weighted percentiles. Regardless of whether a place has 50 inches of snow a year or 100 inches, it sees more snow than 95 percent of the country, so both those places get a snowiness score of 10. We also used the square root or percentile ranks of values to smooth out some skewed score distributions.
New York City Is A Safe Place To Live
It may surprise you to learn that living in New York City is not unsafe like most people assume.
Its hard to blame anyone for thinking that life in New York City could be dangerous. With 8.2 million residents, NYC is the most populous city in America and things are bound to happen.
However, relative to its size, New York City is considered one of the top 5 safest large cities in America.
After living in New York City for so long, I can honestly say Ive never felt unsafe in the city and thats mostly because Ive never really been alone on the streets.
Theres so many folks exploring the city at any given hour that youre seldom alone. You just have to know which main streets to stick to and which areas to avoid.
For instance, I dont walk through Central Park after dark.
Instead, I stick to the main streets where eager tourists and locals alike meander through the city streets while returning home from late night meals or libations. Theres powers in numbers.
I currently live in Manhattan and understand that busy streets are not as common in the other boroughs, so make sure to do deep research on the area you plan to move to in NYC.
If youre still unsure, this handy tool may be helpful to keep on your person.
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Cons Of Making The Move
- The Cold Weather Seasonal changes are great, but if you dislike the cold, and more importantly, snow, then living in New York state might not be ideal for you. Upstate areas receive well over 70 inches of snowfall per year.
- The high cost of living Of course, NYC is expensive, but much of the surrounding southern areas of the state also come with a hefty price tag. Taxes are also pretty high here, and during your working years, youll pay out a bigger chunk of your income than the majority of other states in the US.
Need To Sell Your Home Before Moving?
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Best Places To Live In New York State: 3 In Cny Make Top 50
Three spots in Central New York have been named among the 50 best places to live in New York state in 2021.
The new list from Niche.com named the Tompkins County village of Cayuga Heights, in the Finger Lakes region, the No. 5 best place to live in the Empire State. East Ithaca was 44th and the Syracuse suburb of Fayetteville ranked 49th overall. All three received an overall grade of A+, thanks to high scores for public schools, housing, job opportunities, safety, and good for families.
Niche, a Pittsburgh-based website that compiles data on schools across America to help students and families find the right school districts and colleges for them, evaluated more than 2,100 places to live in New York, ranking the top 635 cities, towns and neighborhoods. Besides Cayuga Heights, the top 10 largely consisted of New York City suburbs, as well as Brighton and Williamsville .
Places in CNY that made the top 500 best places to live include Clinton , Liverpool , Hamilton , Westvale , Washington Mills , Minoa , Fairmount , Baldwinsville , Whitesboro , Chittenango and Galeville .
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Massapequa Park Long Island
Source: hazer2006 / Flickr
Massapequa Park is another area in New York that offers an excellent setting for families looking to settle in the state.
For one, homes are affordable in this hamlet of 17,000 residents found within the town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County. Zillow puts the median home value at $463,800, quite low according to New York standards.
Its schools rank highly on the GreatSchools ranking site .
With a trip into Midtown Manhattan via the Long Island Railroad taking less than an hour, this convenient location also allows residents to enjoy the best NYC has to offer in terms of economic and cultural opportunities.
We Love Us An Outdoor Festival
Balloonfest. Oktoberfest. Film festival. Arts & Crafts Festival. Taste of Syracuse. Blues Festival. Fashion Week. Ozfest. Dozens of festivals spread from downtown to Jamesville, Baldwinsville, and beyond. A Crawfish Festival at Clinton Square, so far from New Orleans, proves we have the moxie to put together any kind of festival.
If we have a signature season, it might be summer and fall festival season. Well find a way to celebrate anything with food, music, and fun. How much do we love our festivals? Smack in the middle of winter, we have Winterfest with outdoor competitions for the best chili and best chowder, steaming hot in Hanover Square.
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For The Most Bang For Your Buck West Hartford Conn
Population: 63,000
Median home price: $309,900
Hear me out.
The pandemic, and its disruption of work habits, has led New Yorkers not just to untether from the city but to propel themselves to places where they never dreamed of living. So why not consider a community less than two hours from the George Washington Bridge with historic roots, a walkable center, high-ranking schools, three public libraries, six public parks, two active senior centers, a 10-year-old mixed-used development that went out of its way not to look like a typical shopping mall and a raft of Best Places awards, including from Money magazine, Niche, Family Circle, Kiplingers Personal Finance magazine and a travel website called The Crazy Tourist?
In West Hartford you have everything, said Scott Glenney, an agent with William Pitt Sothebys International Realty, who works in the greater Hartford area. Nature, culture, restaurants with award-winning chefs. New developments are helping to shift the center of gravity from adjacent Hartford, though there is easy access to the economically troubled capitals jobs and cultural offerings. And proximity to the nearby Farmington Valley means being minutes away from apple orchards, golf courses, hiking and river sports.
For Mr. Glenney, fresh from showing a Manhattan couple a house in nearby Avon, the biggest argument for West Hartford is the relatively low cost of real estate, even with Connecticuts high property taxes.
Pros And Cons Of Living In New York
Youve heard it before, and its true: no place is perfect. What matters is how good of a fit it is for you.
Relocalate.com is here to help you decide whether New York is the best place for YOU to live.
Here are some reasons to love living in New York:
- Close proximity to so many things, great public transportation system which makes getting around easy for both work and play!
And, on the flip side, here are some of the downsides of living in New York:
- Rent is high , NYC winters are brutal but theres plenty of fun stuff to do indoors as well.
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