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Dec 23, 2006, 6:58 AM
Planning a New Life in the City
By VIVIAN S. TOY
December 24, 2006
WHEN developers talk about who will buy all the high-end condominiums that they are building or planning to build in Manhattan, empty nesters invariably make the list.
And since the oldest baby boomers turned 60 this year, more and more of them are becoming empty nesters, in many cases with more disposable income than their parents had before them.
But not all of the baby boomers being drawn to New York City are wealthy retirees seeking aeries on Central Park. The city is also luring middle-class suburbanites on the lookout for houses and condos in Brooklyn and Queens. Not yet of retirement age, but with children grown up, they see the city as the place where they want to grow old, and they are making the move as part of a future retirement plan.
They are wooed not only by the city’s cultural attractions, but also by lower property taxes, better public transportation, a highly accessible health care system and the chance to be closer to city-dwelling children.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/22/realestate/24cov650.2.jpg
Lou and Susan Greer with their dog Cagney in the backyard of their Campbell Hall, N.Y. home.
Louis and Susan Greer are empty nesters who have decided to pack up their five-bedroom house on a six-acre spread in Campbell Hall, N.Y., in Orange County, and move to Brooklyn. They are seeking either a one-family house for under $600,000, or a two-family for under $800,000.
Mr. Greer’s 2-hour-and-15-minute “commute from Hades” to his job in Lower Manhattan was one factor, but he said it was rising property taxes that finally persuaded him and his wife to start their Brooklyn house hunt. “That was the nail in the coffin,” he said, “because we don’t have children at home anymore, and most of the taxes go to schools.”
William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said people like the Greers are at the leading edge of a baby boomer trend of “young seniors” with grown children. (Baby boomers are generally defined as people born in 1946 through 1964.)
“Especially as they reach early retirement, as in ages 50 to 55,” Mr. Frey said, “baby boomers will be testing out areas like New York for the longer term.”
According to a report issued by Mr. Frey with the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington last month, the baby boomers who do not age in place or, like previous generations, move to sunnier climes, will be lured into big cities.
“You can’t really compare baby boomers with previous generations,” Mr. Frey said, “because boomers are forever young. They also have education levels and cultural interests that would suggest they might be more likely to find cities attractive.”
The number of older residents moving into New York and other cities is still smaller than the number who move out to the suburbs or to places like Florida and Arizona, but demographers, economists and gerontologists say that “in migration” numbers are sure to grow as baby boomers age.
Ken Dychtwald, a gerontologist and founder of Age Wave, a consulting firm that focuses on baby boomers’ retirement, described them as generally wanting more out of the experience than the typical resort lifestyle associated with golf courses and recreation rooms. As a result, he said, boomers will probably move in increasing numbers to cities and college towns.
“Life that is nothing but leisure is not appealing to them,” he said. “They’re dreaming of action. They want to be around bookstores and coffee shops and art galleries, and they will be less about showing up at senior centers and more about taking classes at N.Y.U. or finding a way to the Cream reunion at Madison Square Garden,” which he noted was sold out for three nights straight last year.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/24/realestate/24cov600.1.jpg
SICK OF COMMUTING Louis and Susan Greer are leaving Campbell Hall, N.Y., for Brooklyn, and have seen
more than 50 houses, many in Bay Ridge, above.
The Greers, who have three grown children, started their search for a house in the city in May and have already seen more than 50 houses, mostly in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. They chose Brooklyn because they lived in Dyker Heights until three years ago and Mr. Greer’s mother still lives in the Bensonhurst house where he grew up.
They originally moved out of the borough because they were fed up with the rumbling and rattling of trucks — their house was on a favored detour off of the Belt Parkway. They love having a huge garden in Orange County, but deer have eaten everything they have planted. Besides, they said, they never have enough time to enjoy the outdoors.
Mrs. Greer admits that she has been extremely particular in their Brooklyn hunt. “You can ask my husband — I can find something wrong with any house,” she said. To which Mr. Greer responded with a nod, “You can quote that.”
But she is unapologetic — because, she said, “when I move this time, I want it to be the last time.” They are still years away from retirement — Mr. Greer is 55 and Mrs. Greer 45 — but they nonetheless want their next home to be the place they retire to.
“We think that New York City is a great place to be if you’re an older person,” Mr. Greer said.
Mrs. Greer said they had already resigned themselves to having a smaller kitchen and even forgoing a garage, as long as they found a house with a decent-sized backyard.
“We want to be able to go for walks in parks, be near the express bus and the subway, and be able to walk to restaurants,” Mr. Greer said, adding: “It’s beautiful out where we are now. The air is great and we can see the mountains, but there’s nowhere to go and nobody to do it with.”
Brokers across the city who have worked with empty nesters moving in from the suburbs say that while retirees may move lock, stock and barrel to be near their grown children and grandchildren, younger boomers may initially use the apartments they buy as pieds-à-terre.
Alan Nickman, an executive vice president at Bellmarc Realty, said he had helped many empty nesters buy apartments in the city. “These are people who have done reasonably well, but they don’t have to be gazillionaires,” he said. “They can spend $500,000 to $600,000 for a studio or a one-bedroom before they’re fully retired, but the majority of them are thinking about making this a permanent place when they finally do retire.”
For baby boomers moving from other parts of the country, or from suburban areas where home prices have not reached the dizzying heights that they have in Manhattan, moving to the city can be a financial stretch.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/22/realestate/24cov650.3.jpg
Pat and Manny Fuchs, Midwesterners who retired early and moved to Manhattan, find it “like Chicago on steroids.”
Pat and Manny Fuchs knew when they decided to leave Rochester Hills, Mich., last year that their real estate dollars wouldn’t go as far in New York City. They sold their 2,400-square-foot Michigan home for about $325,000 and paid about twice as much for less than half the space in Lincoln Towers, near Lincoln Center.
“Rochester Hills was a nice, comfortable middle-income area,” Mr. Fuchs said. “But we knew we were in for a price shock, so we factored it in.”
He and his wife are retired and in their 50s. They are originally from the Chicago area, but chose New York because, Mrs. Fuchs said, it “has more of all the good things that we love about Chicago — it’s like Chicago on steroids.” They love being within walking distance of Broadway shows and museums. “In some ways,” Mr. Fuchs said, “it was very liberating to get rid of the cars and to downsize.”
Joe and Debbie Karp are another active couple in their 50s who see themselves someday retiring to New York City. The Karps are born-and-bred New Yorkers who moved to Florida in the 1970s and now live in Palm Beach. With their two sons nearly out of college, they decided last fall to buy a one-bedroom apartment near Lincoln Center.
They plan to start by spending about 12 weeks a year in the city, but their eventual goal is to spend only their winters in Florida. “We see what happens to people in the suburbs,” said Debbie Karp, who is 55. “When you lose your car, you become a prisoner. If and when we retire in an official sense, I would want to do it in New York.”
Mr. Karp, who turns 60 next month and practices elder law, agrees. “Although all of my clients are moving to Florida from New York,” he said, “I’m going to be the Floridian moving to Manhattan.”
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/22/realestate/24cov650.5.jpg
Shelley Morris, right, whose house in Bedford, N.Y., has become a lot quieter with her daughter in college. She has
been looking at Manhattan apartments like this one on East 30th Street.
Shelley Morris and her husband, Seth, have just started the process of reversing the typical migration from city to suburb. They are still debating whether to give up their suburban lives in Bedford, N.Y., and get a large two-bedroom apartment in the city, or to get a smaller apartment and still keep a country house for weekend use.
Either way, they’re ready for a big change, because their house has become very quiet since their daughter graduated from college and moved into the city.
“It just crept up on me that I was living in a community with a lot of young families and fewer and fewer empty nesters my age,” said Ms. Morris, who is 49. “And I worry that if you’re in an isolated place, you can become reclusive and that’s not really a good thing, especially as you get older.”
Others are making the switch more gradually. In Kew Gardens, Queens, for instance, many of the Long Island homeowners who have considered moving into the Park Lane Tower, a new condominium, have been reluctant to downsize so significantly from their large suburban homes, said Aroza Sanjana, the broker for the building.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “no matter how many closets we have, it can’t compare to the space they have in the suburbs.” Instead, many have bought apartments for their grown children but are keeping the apartments in their own names. “The parents are very picky about it because it’s not just for their child,” she said. “They envision moving into it themselves eventually.”
Vincent Koo, owner of Exit Kingdom Realty in Forest Hills, said that his office had worked with many Long Islanders looking to downsize and move to Queens. “We see a lot of people who want to cut down on the commute,” he said, “and property taxes are a big issue for them.”
Gary Englehardt, an economist at Syracuse University who has studied housing trends among baby boomers, foresees “a lot of competition for suburbanite baby boomers” among developers. Even though cities like New York may attract many of them, he said, builders are working hard to create retirement communities to keep them in the suburbs.
Mr. Dychtwald of Age Wave said cities might have to do some retrofitting to accommodate an aging population better. “Cities are really geared for people in their early 20s,” he said. To make things easier for people with weakening vision and slower gaits, he suggested, restaurants might consider better lighting, city officials might want to lengthen the time it takes for a traffic light to change.
“We’re not talking about a new alien form of baby boomer,” he said, “just older people who will have more time and probably more money to spend who are looking to take in all that the city has to offer.”
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/24/realestate/24cov50.4.jpg
GREAT AT ANY AGE Judy and Jay Greenfield, retirees who moved to the city from Mamaroneck, N.Y., love being
nearer their children’s families.
But Judy and Jay Greenfield, who moved to the Upper East Side from Mamaroneck, in Westchester, last summer to be closer to their children and grandchildren, said they had found the city perfectly suited for a couple in their early 70s.
“When you reach our age,” Mr. Greenfield said, “everything has a reduced price. You get these big reductions in transportation and in the subway, even pregnant women offer me their seats. But I don’t take them.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
By VIVIAN S. TOY
December 24, 2006
WHEN developers talk about who will buy all the high-end condominiums that they are building or planning to build in Manhattan, empty nesters invariably make the list.
And since the oldest baby boomers turned 60 this year, more and more of them are becoming empty nesters, in many cases with more disposable income than their parents had before them.
But not all of the baby boomers being drawn to New York City are wealthy retirees seeking aeries on Central Park. The city is also luring middle-class suburbanites on the lookout for houses and condos in Brooklyn and Queens. Not yet of retirement age, but with children grown up, they see the city as the place where they want to grow old, and they are making the move as part of a future retirement plan.
They are wooed not only by the city’s cultural attractions, but also by lower property taxes, better public transportation, a highly accessible health care system and the chance to be closer to city-dwelling children.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/22/realestate/24cov650.2.jpg
Lou and Susan Greer with their dog Cagney in the backyard of their Campbell Hall, N.Y. home.
Louis and Susan Greer are empty nesters who have decided to pack up their five-bedroom house on a six-acre spread in Campbell Hall, N.Y., in Orange County, and move to Brooklyn. They are seeking either a one-family house for under $600,000, or a two-family for under $800,000.
Mr. Greer’s 2-hour-and-15-minute “commute from Hades” to his job in Lower Manhattan was one factor, but he said it was rising property taxes that finally persuaded him and his wife to start their Brooklyn house hunt. “That was the nail in the coffin,” he said, “because we don’t have children at home anymore, and most of the taxes go to schools.”
William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said people like the Greers are at the leading edge of a baby boomer trend of “young seniors” with grown children. (Baby boomers are generally defined as people born in 1946 through 1964.)
“Especially as they reach early retirement, as in ages 50 to 55,” Mr. Frey said, “baby boomers will be testing out areas like New York for the longer term.”
According to a report issued by Mr. Frey with the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington last month, the baby boomers who do not age in place or, like previous generations, move to sunnier climes, will be lured into big cities.
“You can’t really compare baby boomers with previous generations,” Mr. Frey said, “because boomers are forever young. They also have education levels and cultural interests that would suggest they might be more likely to find cities attractive.”
The number of older residents moving into New York and other cities is still smaller than the number who move out to the suburbs or to places like Florida and Arizona, but demographers, economists and gerontologists say that “in migration” numbers are sure to grow as baby boomers age.
Ken Dychtwald, a gerontologist and founder of Age Wave, a consulting firm that focuses on baby boomers’ retirement, described them as generally wanting more out of the experience than the typical resort lifestyle associated with golf courses and recreation rooms. As a result, he said, boomers will probably move in increasing numbers to cities and college towns.
“Life that is nothing but leisure is not appealing to them,” he said. “They’re dreaming of action. They want to be around bookstores and coffee shops and art galleries, and they will be less about showing up at senior centers and more about taking classes at N.Y.U. or finding a way to the Cream reunion at Madison Square Garden,” which he noted was sold out for three nights straight last year.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/24/realestate/24cov600.1.jpg
SICK OF COMMUTING Louis and Susan Greer are leaving Campbell Hall, N.Y., for Brooklyn, and have seen
more than 50 houses, many in Bay Ridge, above.
The Greers, who have three grown children, started their search for a house in the city in May and have already seen more than 50 houses, mostly in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. They chose Brooklyn because they lived in Dyker Heights until three years ago and Mr. Greer’s mother still lives in the Bensonhurst house where he grew up.
They originally moved out of the borough because they were fed up with the rumbling and rattling of trucks — their house was on a favored detour off of the Belt Parkway. They love having a huge garden in Orange County, but deer have eaten everything they have planted. Besides, they said, they never have enough time to enjoy the outdoors.
Mrs. Greer admits that she has been extremely particular in their Brooklyn hunt. “You can ask my husband — I can find something wrong with any house,” she said. To which Mr. Greer responded with a nod, “You can quote that.”
But she is unapologetic — because, she said, “when I move this time, I want it to be the last time.” They are still years away from retirement — Mr. Greer is 55 and Mrs. Greer 45 — but they nonetheless want their next home to be the place they retire to.
“We think that New York City is a great place to be if you’re an older person,” Mr. Greer said.
Mrs. Greer said they had already resigned themselves to having a smaller kitchen and even forgoing a garage, as long as they found a house with a decent-sized backyard.
“We want to be able to go for walks in parks, be near the express bus and the subway, and be able to walk to restaurants,” Mr. Greer said, adding: “It’s beautiful out where we are now. The air is great and we can see the mountains, but there’s nowhere to go and nobody to do it with.”
Brokers across the city who have worked with empty nesters moving in from the suburbs say that while retirees may move lock, stock and barrel to be near their grown children and grandchildren, younger boomers may initially use the apartments they buy as pieds-à-terre.
Alan Nickman, an executive vice president at Bellmarc Realty, said he had helped many empty nesters buy apartments in the city. “These are people who have done reasonably well, but they don’t have to be gazillionaires,” he said. “They can spend $500,000 to $600,000 for a studio or a one-bedroom before they’re fully retired, but the majority of them are thinking about making this a permanent place when they finally do retire.”
For baby boomers moving from other parts of the country, or from suburban areas where home prices have not reached the dizzying heights that they have in Manhattan, moving to the city can be a financial stretch.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/22/realestate/24cov650.3.jpg
Pat and Manny Fuchs, Midwesterners who retired early and moved to Manhattan, find it “like Chicago on steroids.”
Pat and Manny Fuchs knew when they decided to leave Rochester Hills, Mich., last year that their real estate dollars wouldn’t go as far in New York City. They sold their 2,400-square-foot Michigan home for about $325,000 and paid about twice as much for less than half the space in Lincoln Towers, near Lincoln Center.
“Rochester Hills was a nice, comfortable middle-income area,” Mr. Fuchs said. “But we knew we were in for a price shock, so we factored it in.”
He and his wife are retired and in their 50s. They are originally from the Chicago area, but chose New York because, Mrs. Fuchs said, it “has more of all the good things that we love about Chicago — it’s like Chicago on steroids.” They love being within walking distance of Broadway shows and museums. “In some ways,” Mr. Fuchs said, “it was very liberating to get rid of the cars and to downsize.”
Joe and Debbie Karp are another active couple in their 50s who see themselves someday retiring to New York City. The Karps are born-and-bred New Yorkers who moved to Florida in the 1970s and now live in Palm Beach. With their two sons nearly out of college, they decided last fall to buy a one-bedroom apartment near Lincoln Center.
They plan to start by spending about 12 weeks a year in the city, but their eventual goal is to spend only their winters in Florida. “We see what happens to people in the suburbs,” said Debbie Karp, who is 55. “When you lose your car, you become a prisoner. If and when we retire in an official sense, I would want to do it in New York.”
Mr. Karp, who turns 60 next month and practices elder law, agrees. “Although all of my clients are moving to Florida from New York,” he said, “I’m going to be the Floridian moving to Manhattan.”
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/22/realestate/24cov650.5.jpg
Shelley Morris, right, whose house in Bedford, N.Y., has become a lot quieter with her daughter in college. She has
been looking at Manhattan apartments like this one on East 30th Street.
Shelley Morris and her husband, Seth, have just started the process of reversing the typical migration from city to suburb. They are still debating whether to give up their suburban lives in Bedford, N.Y., and get a large two-bedroom apartment in the city, or to get a smaller apartment and still keep a country house for weekend use.
Either way, they’re ready for a big change, because their house has become very quiet since their daughter graduated from college and moved into the city.
“It just crept up on me that I was living in a community with a lot of young families and fewer and fewer empty nesters my age,” said Ms. Morris, who is 49. “And I worry that if you’re in an isolated place, you can become reclusive and that’s not really a good thing, especially as you get older.”
Others are making the switch more gradually. In Kew Gardens, Queens, for instance, many of the Long Island homeowners who have considered moving into the Park Lane Tower, a new condominium, have been reluctant to downsize so significantly from their large suburban homes, said Aroza Sanjana, the broker for the building.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “no matter how many closets we have, it can’t compare to the space they have in the suburbs.” Instead, many have bought apartments for their grown children but are keeping the apartments in their own names. “The parents are very picky about it because it’s not just for their child,” she said. “They envision moving into it themselves eventually.”
Vincent Koo, owner of Exit Kingdom Realty in Forest Hills, said that his office had worked with many Long Islanders looking to downsize and move to Queens. “We see a lot of people who want to cut down on the commute,” he said, “and property taxes are a big issue for them.”
Gary Englehardt, an economist at Syracuse University who has studied housing trends among baby boomers, foresees “a lot of competition for suburbanite baby boomers” among developers. Even though cities like New York may attract many of them, he said, builders are working hard to create retirement communities to keep them in the suburbs.
Mr. Dychtwald of Age Wave said cities might have to do some retrofitting to accommodate an aging population better. “Cities are really geared for people in their early 20s,” he said. To make things easier for people with weakening vision and slower gaits, he suggested, restaurants might consider better lighting, city officials might want to lengthen the time it takes for a traffic light to change.
“We’re not talking about a new alien form of baby boomer,” he said, “just older people who will have more time and probably more money to spend who are looking to take in all that the city has to offer.”
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/24/realestate/24cov50.4.jpg
GREAT AT ANY AGE Judy and Jay Greenfield, retirees who moved to the city from Mamaroneck, N.Y., love being
nearer their children’s families.
But Judy and Jay Greenfield, who moved to the Upper East Side from Mamaroneck, in Westchester, last summer to be closer to their children and grandchildren, said they had found the city perfectly suited for a couple in their early 70s.
“When you reach our age,” Mr. Greenfield said, “everything has a reduced price. You get these big reductions in transportation and in the subway, even pregnant women offer me their seats. But I don’t take them.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company