My kids and I frequently take the Light Rail to Jersey City to shop and visit friends who love living there. When it came time to buy a large home, we opted for Hoboken because of the walkability and small town feel. Newspaper column at http://patch.com/A-xVg
When I was a child, I learned the parable of Joseph and the coat of many colors. The thing I took away from that tale was the seven fat years followed by 7 lean years. During the late 1990s to early 2000s, when my husband and I were both working full-time, I made sure to save a comfortable amount each year as an emergency/investment fund. Windfall income like bonuses and income tax refunds went right into savings.
During boom times, nobody ever thinks the party is going to end. Easy credit facilitated trying to match the Jones, with everyone buying homes, flat screen TVs, and new cars. It was psychologically hard during those years for me and my husband to live frugally, buying a home in an unfashionable part of Hoboken and wearing our clothes and shoes until they wore out, often mending them until they were beyond repair. But our thriftiness paid off. When the bubble burst in the fall of 2008, we had almost 50% equity in our home plus a large cash cushion.
During each of the last three recessions, the degree of economic insecurity has increased by 150% over the prior one, with minority groups disproportionately impacted. That was a huge factor in our decision to buy a large home in Hoboken. We felt that the highly educated population had a good chance of remaining employed, and that even those experiencing unemployment were likely to have financial resources to tide them through bad times, thus making foreclosure unlikely. It is also fairly easy to rent your home in Hoboken since the population is transient and we are so close to NYC, with 24-hour public transportation. We also liked the fact that Hoboken is only one square mile; that means there are limits to how much development can take place, thereby devaluing our property by dramatically increasing the supply of homes.
So, at a time when many people thought we were headed into a global depression, my husband and I took the plunge to make the biggest purchase of our lives. Our family now has the stability and space we need to flourish, and that was the gamble I made when we purchased our home. And our bet paid off. We are now in the process of rebuilding our finances as a hedge against the future, but we got exactly the home we wanted at a good price and excellent interest rate. I have also found Hoboken to be a hotbed of industry and innovation; I am collaborating with a bunch of other moms to provide professional consulting services to local businesses that work with our family responsibilities, and also talking to another mom about starting a Montessori co-op to get the best education for our toddlers at an affordable price. Only in a city that is a mile square and has so many educated, proactive residents would these kinds of opportunities be possible.
The bookkeeper position has been filled by one of the moms from the consulting network. I am also in talks with several local businesses for bookkeeping, project management and web development opportunities, will post more info when I have it.
I recently filed my 2009 taxes (thank you, deadline extension!) and found out I am receiving a huge refund because of our itemized deductions. If you are a homeowning dual-income couple with one full-time employee and one consultant, it can be really beneficial tax-wise. More details at http://bit.ly/bNZFc6, login required.
UCLA recently videotaped 32 suburban families for one full week to get a handle on individual stress levels and to quantify the the amount of time spent on chores, child care, and leisure. The NYTimes reports that: “Inside the homes, researchers found rooms crammed with toys, DVDs, videos, books, exercise machines; refrigerators buried in magnets; and other odds and ends. The clutter on the fridge door tended to predict the amount of clutter elsewhere.
Outside the homes, the yards were open and green — but “no one was out there,” said Jeanne E. Arnold, a U.C.L.A. archaeologist who worked on the study. One family had a 17,000-square-foot yard, with a pool and a trampoline, and not even the children ventured out there during the study.”
I have noticed before that people tend to use their outdoor space a lot less than they expect. When I visit relatives in suburban Westchester, I never see anyone in the backyards, despite manicured grass and gorgeous swing sets. If the point of moving to the suburbs is having a backyard, then I think people need to seriously evaluate how much they are going to use it.
I used to own a 2-bedroom apartment with a giant outdoor space. I noticed after the first couple of years that we rarely went outside, even when the weather was nice. I tried buying really nice outdoor furniture, a carpet and huge umbrellas to provide shade, and we still didn’t go outside much. No al fresco breakfasts or dinners, aside from the occasional family barbecue. It was either too sunny and hot (our unit faced full south), or it was getting dark and the mosquitoes were out. Even after we had kids, we would maybe use the space for half an hour on nice days.
So when the time came to move into a bigger home, I knew that we wanted some outdoor space but that indoor space was higher priority because we would use it frequently. We wound up getting a 2,100 square foot 4-bedroom with a 120 sf balcony, and the combination has worked out really nicely. We have enough outdoor space for the kids to plant flowers and herbs, paint on their easel and play in their wading pool. They shovel snow in the winter and barbecue in the summer.
Living in a walkable town like Hoboken provides lots of opportunity for playing outdoors. The kids and I leave the house to go to classes or the playground in the morning. We walk over to Washington Street to pick up organic sesame pretzels (low salt!) and freeze-dried fruit at Basic Foods. We pick up frozen yogurt or ice cream on the way back home. We are out of the house for easily five hours, and we are walking around the entire time, so the kids get fresh air and exercise.
If we lived in the suburbs, I don’t think I would ever leave the house. Packing supplies and a stroller for a day out in the car is a huge excursion, whereas I leave my double stroller set up and ready to go each morning. On Fridays, we often meet my husband at the ferry terminal and walk home together for dinner and bathtime. His 35-minute commute makes it easy to spend time together as a family, and not having to mow the lawn on weekends is priceless.
As a corollary to my newborn necessity list; a friend requested a list of what I would buy if I were having twins.
Babyproofing (don’t know if you want to put this on a registry)
But in the end, it was the only logical choice. Large condos at much lower prices than in Brooklyn, a second bathroom and easy access to transportation were important elements in our decision, but the deciding factor was the 21% difference in income taxes.
Newspaper column at http://patch.com/A-xmm
I have been redecorating my condo because I can’t stand the piles of clutter everywhere and the awkward pieces of furniture shoved in corners. Rule #1 to organization is you have have to have space in which to put things; that means we need new furniture. As usual, we have almost no budget for decoration (think $1k-$2k); far too little to recruit an interior decorator. So I plagiarize.
When I was at a good friend’s house a few weeks ago, I saw she was using a leather storage bench for additional seating against the wall at her dining table, which I thought was brilliant. I repurposed a bedroom storage bench; instead of using it for shoe storage I moved it behind our dining table, and I love the instant roominess there. Now we can easily seat 5-6 people at every meal rather than three, plus store table linens, sunblock and other last-minute walk necessities.
Next on the list was my daughter’s room and the living room entryway. I bought a storage chiffonier ($600) on clearance from Gothic Cabinet Craft on Washington Street to replace the too-small and poor-quality white dresser. We now have five spacious drawers topped by a cabinet with three shelves. The clothes she is currently wearing go in the drawers, out-of-season and too-large clothing goes on the shelves, and I bought two large storage bins for the top to store outgrown clothes for a younger sibling or cousin.
I initially bought a smaller chiffonier ($400) from another Hoboken mom who was leaving the area, but it looked tiny as soon as I got it home. I moved it to my son’s much smaller room and it fits perfectly there, providing ample storage for his current and too-large clothing.
Next up on the list was the living room entry. We currently use that area as a mud room, but since it is part of the great room (living/dining/kitchen) I wanted it to less obviously utilitarian. After several false starts, I found an elegant solid wood bench ($199) on clearance from the Crate & Barrel outlet that I purchased with American Express rewards gift certificates, so the actual cost out of pocket was $100 for my handyman to pick it up from the outlet store (thanks, Andy!) I also bought a slim-profile 2-bin recycler ($45.46 including shipping after googling a 20% coupon) and white coat hook rail ($21.99) to blend in with the molding and hang the kids’ jackets.
So far I have spent $1,167.45, and I am pretty much done. I still need to declutter and reorganize my kitchen and den, but I don’t anticipate spending more than $100 for some inexpensive storage bins.
Next on my agenda; artwork and photograph collages. My walls are looking pretty bare, and I love the hanging collage picture frames another friend has all over her apartment. My family has given us some original artwork, so that’s a start. Now I need to come up with a color scheme and wall plan.
The NYTimes published a cost of living analysis for a family living Brooklyn versus a New Jersey suburb. Brooklyn came out 18% cheaper because you don’t need a car (versus two in the suburbs) and a small apartment is cheaper to maintain than a big house. Hoboken is even cheaper than Brooklyn, and you get much more for the same money.
Column at http://patch.com/A-wqm
Living in Hoboken is noisy. It’s a fact of life with urban living, especially when you have 40,000 people crammed into one square mile. And that’s without counting all the out-of-towners who descend on the Hoboken bar scene on weekends.
You have basically three types of noise: street, horizontal, and vertical. The closer you are to Washington Street, the more street noise you have to contend with. It also depends on where your property faces (rooms facing the street hear a lot more). Horizontal noise comes from shared walls and hallways. My current four-bedroom has no shared walls thanks to ingenious courtyard cutouts in the exterior walls, so I hear nothing on a horizontal level unless I am sitting right next to one of the exterior doors (pretty infrequent in a 2,000 square foot apartment). Vertical noise depends on building construction and your neighbors. Steel/concrete construction helps diminish but not entirely eliminate vertical noise.
And the obvious answer, living on the top floor, is also fraught with peril because while you may not have neighbors above you, you do have the roof overhead. Roofs are notorious for leaking, especially in new construction.
People always seem to think there is some magical noise-free solution out there, and there isn’t. I grew up in a detached house on a quiet, leafy street, and I often slept with my pillow over my head. I could hear the garbage pickup in the middle of the night, jackhammers working on interminable street repairs (seriously, I have never seen such frequent street repairs anywhere outside of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn), neighbors fighting two doors down, crickets and birds chirping, gas-powered leaf blowers. Not to mention my kid brother jumping off his bed in his room right above the kitchen where I was trying to do homework.
When it comes to noise, you have to pick your poison. There is no ideal solution unless you plan on spending massive amounts on soundproofing, and even then there is no guarantee that you will never hear anything. Owner-occupied buildings tend to be quieter than rentals. As long as you have considerate neighbors, you will be all right re. noise.
It’s just as charming as ever, but viewed through the lens of family living, I am glad we decided to raise a family in Hoboken. Column at http://patch.com/A-vFV
