Coronavirus Escape: To the Suburbs – To Weston Connecticut
- Posted by goweston
- On May 8, 2020
Weston Connecticut best places to live near NYC with best public schools.
The pandemic has convinced some New Yorkers that it’s time to finally give up on city living.
By
May 8, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
For some New Yorkers, it’s time to get out of town for good.
Cooped up and concerned about the post-Covid future, renters and owners are making moves to leave the city, not for short-term stays in weekend houses, as was common when the pandemic first arrived, but more permanently in the suburbs.
While some of the fresh transplants are accelerating plans that had been simmering on the back burner, others are doing what once seemed unthinkable, opting for a split-level on a cul-de-sac after decades of apartment living. Others seem to have acquired a taste for country life after sheltering with parents in places with big lawns or in log cabins.
But there’s also a sense that in today’s era of social distancing, one-person-at-a-time elevator rides to get home and looping routes to avoid passers-by on city streets has fundamentally changed New York City.
“It’s not the same feeling being in New York anymore,” said Matthew Silpe, 51, a 30-year Manhattan resident who is on the verge of breaking the lease on his three-bedroom rental on the Upper East Side to move to a house in Nassau County, Long Island. “The balance of nature in the city has become so different.”
Although tracking regionwide relocations is difficult, existing data and anecdotal evidence suggest a clear Covid effect.
For starters, people seem to be packing their bags. Between March 15 and April 28, moves from New York to Connecticut increased 74 percent over the period a year ago, according to FlatRate Moving. Moves to New Jersey saw a 38 percent jump, while Long Island was up 48 percent.
Also, suburban towns not really known for their rental stock have had huge spikes in activity, which is being driven in part by escaping New Yorkers, according to brokers in those areas.
Leafy Wilton, in Fairfield County, Conn., for instance, experienced 19 lease signings between March 1 and April 29, versus 10 in the same period last year, according to the brokerage Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties.
In the same period, Westport had 63 new rentals, up from 36, the firm said, while in Greenwich it was 200 versus 158. Properties included single-family houses and condos, and leases were sometimes as short as two months.
Many of those transplants are already angling to buy. Unsure about whether their children’s city schools will open in the fall, and enjoying home offices that are more than just a corner of a foyer, the suburbs are suddenly more appealing, brokers said.
Similarly, in close-in parts of New Jersey, New Yorkers who rushed for the exits have energized the market. High-end houses that had languished last year as the luxury market stalled have been re-listed as rentals and found takers, said Leslie Kunkin, an agent with West of Hudson Realty in Montclair.
“Some buyers are renting temporarily because they just want out,” Ms. Kunkin said. But some of those renters are converting to buyers: Some houses listed at the end of April received multiple offers, she said.
Others are buying in the suburbs right off the bat, like Hannah Volkman, who is trying to trade a two-bedroom co-op in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for a house with at least four bedrooms in Montclair.
Originally, Ms. Volkman and her husband, Justin Sheehan, who have a 4-year-old daughter and another child on the way, envisioned relocating in the summer of 2021.
But the coronavirus added urgency to those plans. Touching elevator buttons is now a nerve-racking concept, as is the idea of crowded subway trains, said Ms. Volkman, who works in Midtown for a social media company.
The weeks she has spent in rural Granby, Conn., hunkered down with her family at her parents’ house, have reinforced her decision to leave the city. A tree-shaded backyard has been a balm.
Eager to be set up in New Jersey before the next school year starts, the family would even consider moving without first selling their city apartment, said Ms. Volkman, for whom the pandemic recalls the fall of 2001, when she moved to New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “There are a lot of similarities to then, a lot of sadness for our city,” she said. “Everything has been turned upside-down.”
Of course, not all buyers can stretch to carry the costs of two properties at once. And because the city’s sales market has been nearly frozen — in-person showings are still banned by the state, if not by many co-op and condo boards — cutting ties will be tough for many owners, brokers say.
In fact, the majority of those who leave New York now are likely to be renters, since leases are comparatively easy to end, said Hal Gavzie, the executive manager of leasing at the firm Douglas Elliman.
“I do think we will see an increase in renters and buyers outside of Manhattan,” Mr. Gavzie said. “But we have very short-term memories with situations like this. Similar to what happened after 9-11, people will come back. It just depends on the time frame.”
Mr. Silpe disinfects his car keys after picking up his car from a New York garage.Credit…Joshua Bright for The New York Times
Between 2001 and 2002, Manhattan swung from a net gain in migration of 7,538 new residents to a net loss of 8,171, according to census figures from the website Social Explorer, at least some of which can be attributed to people relocating after the terrorist attacks.
Whether the coronavirus crisis deals a similar blow will likely be tougher to measure, as Manhattan has been experiencing negative net migration — more people moving out than arriving — since 2013, Social Explorer data shows.
Fetching a car from a garage has become fraught, too, said Mr. Silpe, who drives to work in New Jersey, where he serves as the chief operating officer for June Jacobs Labs, which manufactures the Peter Thomas Roth skin-care line. (It has also created a new hand-sanitizer line, thousands of bottles of which have been donated to the Northwell hospital chain.)
After an attendant delivers his car, Mr. Silpe carefully wipes down the seats, the console and the keys, which he wouldn’t have to do if he parked in his own private driveway.
Focused on rentals for now, with plans to buy within six months, Mr. Silpe submitted offers on two houses in late April, one in Centre Island and one in Laurel Hollow, he said. “The infringements on your life are not without cause,” Mr. Silpe said. “But it is just unmanageable to live in the city right now. And who knows how long this will go on?”
Adjusting to the March 17 shuttering of sit-down restaurants, many of which may not be able to reopen for financial reasons, might be the most difficult part, said Athena Witt, an agent with Douglas Elliman who in March moved to a townhouse in Danbury, Conn., and doesn’t expect to return soon.
In fact, last month, she listed her city home, a one-bedroom condo on West 57th Street for $1.495 million. “One of the purposes of Manhattan is to socialize, and if those things are going to be taken away, then what’s the point of staying?” Ms. Witt said.
Sharon Murphy’s change of heart, meanwhile, has a lot to do with walking her golden retriever, Aurora, in Central Park, which has often been packed with people not wearing masks. Somebody coughs, she added, and she jumps.
Having a place big enough for future quarantines is also newly important. This spring, her daughter was sent home early from her upstate college, meaning her three-bedroom condo on the Upper East Side, which is also shared by a high-school-age son, became crowded.
Pre-Covid, Ms. Murphy, 55, was looking at two-bedrooms in Manhattan. Now, though, she’s seeking a three-bedroom in the Hudson Valley, like in Peekskill, N.Y.
“I feel sometimes like I am only safe in my car,” said Ms Murphy, who has lived in New York since 1991 and once considered herself a big walker. “I may move up there and hate it and come back to the city, but I feel like I have to give it a try.”
Farther flung locations, like Beacon, N.Y., on a Metro-North train line in Dutchess County, are also getting a look.
Two new arrivals are Nick Hernandez, 33 and Ann Skinner, 34, who were living in a three-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, when the city went into lockdown. At first, they went to a house in Vermont that they had been renting over the winter as a base for snowboarding trips.
But at one point they were harassed by a cashier at the general store who could see their New York license plates through the windows, Mr. Hernandez said. Disillusioned, the couple, who are engaged, then shuttled to Mr. Hernandez’s parents house, a log cabin in Newtown, N.J.
Moving upstate to a place like Beacon was always in the cards. But the couple did not plan on facing so much competition when trying. “Places were just disappearing left and right,” Mr. Hernandez said.
In Beacon, they landed a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment in a semidetached house with shutters and a yard for $2,100 a month. And their city landlord has been flexible, allowing them to bump up their move-out date by two months to June 1.
Eventually, Ms. Skinner, an architect, and Mr. Hernandez, a photography director, would like to move out West. But Ms. Skinner said, “if we fall in love with Beacon, we may end up staying.”
The coronavirus has made shopping for a house more complicated. New York State has banned in-person showings with agents, though Connecticut and New Jersey allow them, with restrictions.
In Connecticut, for instance, buyers can’t ride in cars with brokers, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which is why Emily Valente recently found herself in a caravan on winding roads in Weston with her agent, Lori Elkins Ferber, of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty.
At stops along the way, Ms. Valente, who currently rents a three-bedroom apartment in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, with her husband, Dan, and their two daughters, would don masks and gloves to enter houses. Doors were left open to avoid touching handles, and lights were turned on. Ms. Valente, whose move was previously planned but has been weathering the headwinds of a changed market all the same, is considering houses between $500,000 and $700,000.
“Having to look for a home during this pandemic time has been definitely interesting,” said Ms. Valente, 40, a librarian.
Weston’s market, which had been sluggish, may get a boost when the health crisis passes, Ms. Ferber said. The town’s two-acre zoning means plenty of rooms between properties, which germ-conscious buyers may appreciate, she added.
And if working from home becomes the new norm, it might no longer matter that Weston is not served by train lines, she added.
Also betting on changing work habits is Robert Taylor, 34, and his wife, Jennifer Taylor, 36, who in early April decamped with their two young children from an 1,100-square-foot rental in Battery Park City, to a 1,600-square-foot split-level-style house on a month-to-month lease in Glen Ridge, N. J.
At the time, about 60 percent of their Manhattan building was emptied out of tenants, Mr. Taylor said.
Robert and Jennifer Taylor, now in Glen Ridge, N.J., left a mostly empty building in Manhattan in April for the suburbs, where they are now looking to buy.Credit…Laura Moss for The New York Times
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, who have been telecommuting to their jobs in finance from their New Jersey home office, expect such arrangements to become more acceptable. So, they are now planning to put down roots in the Garden State.
A suburban reality would seem potentially jarring for Mr. Taylor, who hadn’t lived in a house since the age of 11, when he went away to an English boarding school. To make New Jersey work, the couple also had to scramble to lease a car.
But in the last few weeks in their split-level on a dead-end street with views of children on bikes, he’s had no regrets. “We didn’t feel a need to move out of New York ever,” Mr. Taylor said, an 11-year Manhattan resident. “But it’s been really nice.”
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