We knew we had to decide about our lease renewal at our current apartment by the middle of this week, so we’ve been calling and visiting apartments in the area that are convenient to appropriate transportation. We had a goal of gaining space and/or saving money and preferably both. We had decided if we couldn’t do either, it wasn’t worth moving.
We’d largely ruled out New York City because we don’t generally like the neighborhoods (that we can afford), NYC parking is difficult, and NYC taxes are very high. We had also ruled out Yonkers because they also have additional city taxes. Long Island and New Jersey were ruled out because commuting into Penn Station is far less convenient than commuting into Grand Central Station since I work on the east side of Manhattan.
This left us with Westchester and possibly Connecticut. On Friday, we spent the most of the day in CT. We ruled out one of the complexes we really liked in Norwalk, CT because transportation was going to be too large of an issue (too far from the train station, too few trains). We found a place we thought would be perfect in Stamford, but they didn’t take cats (oh well!). Then we found a couple other places in downtown Stamford which we were really hopeful about – we absolutely loved downtown Stamford. We were close to actually signing a lease at two different places, but ultimately decided that the commute just wasn’t worth it (but we were SO tempted!)… But ultimately, spending an extra 60 – 90 minutes a day travelling just wasn’t worth the great neighborhood.
Friday night I did some more looking and found a place in Yonkers that looked appealing. I re-ran our 2008 taxes as if we lived in both NYC and in Yonkers for the year and learned that while NYC does have incredibly high taxes, Yonkers aren’t that much higher. On Saturday, we got an early start and visited the complex in Yonkers. The apartments were really nice and the immediate neighborhood is fantastic. The train is very close and it is right on the Hudson river. I looked at a few more places, but ultimately we decided it was where we would next call home. We returned on Sunday and put in the application. Assuming all goes smoothly, we’ll be signing the lease this week and moving in mid-June.