Bought a 2nd home in Aug 2017 to compliment our Brooklyn condo. My wife constantly says it was the smartest thing we ever did. I concur. To me, time spent having friends and family stay with us is the ultimate. Our kids are experiencing the outdoors in ways they couldn't do so in Brooklyn. Most importantly, we're making lasting family memories seemingly every weekend
3
My wife dragged me kicking and screaming to a house on 20 acres with an in ground pool in the Hudson Valley from Park Ave South in 2008! I haven't looked back since and can't imagine ever living in a small dark apartment with no view again. Having been born in Manhattan thinking NYC was the be all end all I never thought leaving was an option. Live the real life you want in the country!
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Why would anyone want the headaches of home ownership when you can just rent a place!!!
4
What this article misses is the fact that AirBnB is part of our lives now. My family lives in Manhattan and for a quarter of the price of a mortgage we can rent a plethora of places from the Hudson Valley, Berkshires, eastern PA, etc. No upkeep on a place, no need to feel bad that you’re not using the house. And no being locked into one location. It truly makes no sense to own a weekend house anymore.
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@Hound112, “...makes no sense”. Unless what you want is to savor a house, a community, a place throughout the seasons.
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Another jersey girl here. I grew up in NYC and lived in Queens. The city became too stifling for us. There was no escape from work since we lived in NYC full time. We migrated to CT. and all the New Yorkers that had weekend homes expected us to do their bidding while they were in NYC and we lived here full time, meaning deal with their contractors, pick up their mail and the winter calls of "how is my house doing, can you go over and check?" Then divorce, I moved back to NYC and had a child. It was great to go to museums and such, we took full advantage but we needed more space, so to New Jersey we came. I think I have the best of both worlds. I can get into NYC when I want and I live in a rural part of NJ where I ride past horse farms and see nature. I need nature.
5
I was that 'small apartment/country weekender' for 35 years. This past year, for several reasons, I had to flip the pattern and make northwest CT. my primary residence. I still had a place to visit in the city, but really made the country my primary residence. I made every effort, joined several organizations, sought like minded people, and pursued genuine interests with intent, gratitude, and enthusiasm.
The summer is always nice. The fall has beauty to behold. The winter nights begin at 4:30 and bring fog, damp, slick roads, deer to hit, fuel sucking rooms, and serious hunkering down. Spring comes late, grudgingly and muddy. It dares you to put away the winter coat.
My conclusion: I missed the city, my people, the culture, the energy, the stimulation, and ambitious, smart company. I missed the diversity and walking. I still love CT. for all the things I've always loved about it: beauty, quiet, a respite, hiking and biking, space (studio space!), no lines at restaurants or movies, reasonable prices, nice people ... And I still need both. Just not a change in proportions. I'll take more city and less country. And be grateful every week when I head north. And equally grateful when I hit the UWS on Sunday night.
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Love country homes and understand the desire and the enjoyment BUT how can anyone who lives in a RENT STABILIZED apartment be permitted to have a country home and be proud of it? I thought rent stabilization was put in place to help New Yorkers to have affordable housing!
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@Justice Holmes: Come on; stop with the intentional mis-understanding of what rent-stabilization means.
Your version appears to be along these lines: Those with rent-stabilized apartments have that special clause in their leases requiring them to walk around in sackcloth and ashes. You seem to think they're so lucky to be rent stabilized that they have no right to any other good/nice thing in this world - am I right? I guess that also means they need to buy clothing only from thrift shops, cut their own hair, and never eat a meal at a restaurant. Even renting a car is forbidden, I suppose.
Did it ever occur to you that "affordable housing" might mean that it's *affordable* for someone to have some nice things (or, horror, even a little luxury!) in their lives?
I have a question for you: How can corporate bigwigs (who've gotten rich off the backs of their underpaid workers) be permitted to have a country home and be proud of it? They should be ashamed of themselves.
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@L Very Trumpian in your spin - only from the other end of the spectrum. There was NO "intentional misunderstanding" of rent stabilization in Justice's brief comment - nothing about taking a vow of poverty as you oversell. Hardly.
A house in country is an expensive luxury, no matter how you spin it. AND then you do the sadly typical left wing offensive/defense of bringing up "corporate bigwigs" - as if that justifies the point here, which is other New Yorkers ARE subsidizing rent stabilized tenants. How? the buildings with Rent stabilized tenants pay less in taxes, which are usurious for market rate buildings, co-ops and condos - NYCHA pays no property taxes.
and while we are on the subject, yeah a "bigwig" gets paid more then an entry level worker, sorry but thats capitalism and thats we why aspire to move up the corporate ladder.
Jersey girl here, currently growing roots in Portland Oregon, having transplanted myself 5 times so far - D.C., Tucson, Santa Cruz and San Francisco are the other stops I've made.
Your article held me recognize the double whammy of the neighborhood I found - it's called Cully. It's still got some gravel roads and large-ish plots - resulting in the largest concentration of urban farms in this city - yet a half hour bike ride to downtown.
While I can't say I'd recommend Portland (especially for us Nor-easter's, our chatty engaging nature can be met by a world view that sees us as bad and wrong to talk so fast!) the air is kinda funky and a nuclear waste dump is located near the source of the Columbia River, so...
but this experience makes it easy to ignore all the cases of asthma popping up in the population....
2
A story that resonates - the city-dweller's desire for some space - up until the OTT "celebrity broker" tie-in. I know everyone in NYC is famous (apparently) but by the end this story (which only scratches the surface of the whole country-house thing) it started to read like an advertorial. People magazine for the 1%?
13
I wonder if it has ever occurred to those with second homes that they could just take the money spent on that home and get a bigger apartment in NYC?
7
A study found out ppl are happier buying two small items instead of a big one. In other words, buy two small houses in totally different places probably will make us happier than own a bigger one in the city. In our case, we do fishing, skiing, hiking and all sort of things when we are in our country house. We would not be that happy if we spent all that money on a bigger house in the city.
12
Move someplace where you can live in a primary home reasonably with all its attendant needs (job, raising kids) and where the primary home can double as the second home with all of its attendant needs.
It can be done.
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My daughter said "Everything (the article said) is accurate."
My wife and I were ordinaly NYC office workers. We bought our country house at Poconos 10 years ago and loved it since. Living in Queens, we drove with our 3 kids to Pocono every weekend and enjoy the quite mountain live over there. Yes it's like "long distance lover" as the article discribed.
4
After 15 years of commuting, finally moved full time to our country house in the Berkshires. Not missing city life, although when it was time for knee surgery, I went to HSS in NYC.
6
I loved it when I lived in small apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan long ago. But over 40 yrs I've watched many of my NYC friends struggle with their homes, the constant hustle to hold onto them or upgrade to a relatively unaffordable more habitable place and who're living what looks like a frustrating life in a home that became way way too small once they had kids, acquired dogs, etc. but which they can't afford to leave for a more suitable place. I think if you keep a 35 lb. dog in a "tiny" apartment, you probably love your dog but your values are really skewed.
8
I have a beautiful 4,000 square foot home here in the Hudson valley on three acres that we would happily trade for a two bedroom apartment in NYC. Any takers?
26
Oh, please. I'm a native New Yorker stuck in a too small cookie cutter apartment in a neighborhood I hate. I don't spend time dreaming about country houses, Street Easy is my real estate escape; looking at rentals I could never afford, with enough space to live enjoyably and express myself. Still, we can't solve the homeless problem, and this very paper just ran several long articles about the dreadful conditions in public housing. So, every day, I have to remind myself that at least I have a home. Add: not burned down in a wildfire, not in a refugee camp, etc. A country house? And, where are they keeping the car they're using to get there? How lovely to have a rent stabilized apartment you don't truly need.
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I guess I'm a bit different, but I grew up in the suburbs and never want to move back. My spouse and I live in a little over 800 sq feet, in a relatively inexpensive area of Manhattan, Murray Hill, with an apartment that overlooks 3 acres of trees and grass.
I love the deep forest, but we more love the city, the intensity, and the convenience. Besides, our connections are here. For myself, the idea of settling down into a suburban town is very unappealing. I'd hate the maintenance and upkeep of property - paying someone to do that work seems antithetical to the article's mission - I'd hate the harm to the environment, and I'd hate the hours wasted packing, traveling back and forth.
My feeling is that it would be better to have a second home in a charming European city or an American city with a lively outdoor scene like Seattle, or simply move to one, rather than to a second residence in the woods.
31
I'm glad the people featured are enjoying their country houses, but this article feels tone-deaf given the housing crisis in the city and the fact that so many New Yorkers spend such a large amount of their income on rent.
45
We're selling our city place and moving to our country house full time. We're lucky enough to have portable jobs, and we decided to not live only for the weekend. Just don't follow us upstate because we don't want it to get too crowded!
17
@Erica: To each their own. I once had a 2nd home upstate with a ton of acreage and beautiful views. It was not relaxing or restful, as something *always* needs to be done when you own a house, and in any storm you could count on the power going out.
Further, I don't see here very much discussion of the time (and $$$) it takes to get there & get back, weekend after weekend after weekend. Cars are expensive to own, to maintain, and to store in NYC.
Also missing is a discussion of living where the chance of getting Lyme disease means that every stroll in the grass is an invitation to illness.
No thanks, and never again! If someone GAVE me a 2nd home now, I'd sell it and use the money for other things.
11
A country place needn't be upscale to deliver the psychic pleasures of a rustic getaway. For some years, I was a regular summer guest at a friend's family cottage in the California Gold Country, a shaggy thing tucked in among redwood and Douglas fir trees in the Sierra foothills. It was only a mile from Interstate 80, the main road connecting San Francisco with Reno, but the peace and silence was undisturbed. There was a 19th-century wood-burning kitchen stove, original to the cottage, that I learned to use with surprisingly good results. What charmed me most was the cast-off, wonderfully mismatched family furniture and other worn-out things we usually let go of -- old 78 Bakelite records (Louie Armstrong and His Hot Five, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw) -- old books, Persian rugs, photo albums, old paintings,, and drawers full of worn clothing no longer suited for city life and work, but left here for summer idylls. I got a profound sense of this family's warm history amid the artifacts of their prior generations, spanning well over a century. No luxury resort anywhere has ever given me the kind of peace and relaxation, let alone an environment encouraging reflection and mindfulness, that I always found there. The luxury of my getaways in that modest little house and its scruffy three acres remains among my most cherished memories.
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It bothers me slightly when people who live in rent-stabilized apartments have country houses.
134
Especially when the country house appreciates on such a massive scale that the rent stabilized family become multimillionaires. rent stabilization was designed to protect NYC’s working middle class - teachers, etc.
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@Luder
Anyone who has the opportunity to live in a rent-stabilized apartment will do so. It's an entirely rational decision that will continue to be made as long as the rent laws are written as they are.
2
@Luder Why? What are they doing wrong in your eyes?
2