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How's the Montauk economy doing?

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Ebbtide231

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18 hours ago, granpappyofpork said:

My unreal-estate hypothesis:

 

Currently, Taxe$ are cheap(er?) out East - comparatively to suburbs, Rockland County 'same houses' paying 17-30k taxes -- increasing school enrollment means increased tax dollars needed -- you pay the extra 150K location markup out East for a home with minimal school tax....it's somewhat of a 'wash' -- however, increase the home price AND increase the taxes... the 'regular guy' is definitively out --- 

If I moved near a friend in North Sea area -- I would pay 10k LESS tax than I pay now -- 4 BR high ranch...but it would cost me 150k more for the same house... COULD (but can't) rationalize paying extra $$$ a month towards mortgage instead of taxes... :headscratch:

I suspect that a lot of the people swarming out east are the sort that don't particularly care about an additional $150,000.  They've got homes in Manhattan, no longer need to live the.re given the ability to work on line, no longer care to live there because of COVID, and are now making their summer homes their primary residence.

 

I'm seeing the same thing up in Greenwich, CT, where I grew up and still have some real estate.  Brokers are constantly sending me inquiries asking whether I want to sell my place, and friends who live there tell me that the real estate demand is off the charts given the people trying to escape the cities.

 

There was just an article in the New York Times discussing how the loss of commuters, the lack of tourists, and the exodus of local residents are causing national businesses to shut down their Manhattan stores and restaurants, in many cases with no plans to return.

 

A combination of COVID and computers may be driving a major demographic and cultural change in the region, which will have a big impact on real estate values both in Manhattan and in more distant suburbs/exurbs.

"I have always believed that outdoor writers who come out against fish and wildlife conservation are in the wrong business. To me, it makes as much sense golf writers coming out against grass.."  --  Ted Williams

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I’m not an economist, but from what I see the place is mobbed with city folk. The motels are packed with people partying up a storm. Beaches are packed. Taxies everywhere.  Does not appear to be a slow down. What’s with the hundred cars every night at the overlook watching the sunset. Great place to watch it but some of these people are parked on the shoulder! 

Bill Wetzel
NYS Licensed Guide
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26 mins ago, Billwetzel said:

I’m not an economist, but from what I see the place is mobbed with city folk. The motels are packed with people partying up a storm. Beaches are packed. Taxies everywhere.  Does not appear to be a slow down. What’s with the hundred cars every night at the overlook watching the sunset. Great place to watch it but some of these people are parked on the shoulder! 

Yes I’ve been navigating around the crowds it’s got very difficult this year. And everyone want to go to montauk to be next to more people. Weekends are crazy a little better during the week. 

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2 hours ago, CWitek said:

I suspect that a lot of the people swarming out east are the sort that don't particularly care about an additional $150,000. 

If you think about it a sec, paying the extra 150k over higher taxes is a win. You'll get that 150k back plus some when you sell, your never getting those taxes back!

 

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27 mins ago, outtasight said:

I was shocked when I seen the taxes on some of the Hamptons houses. Mulit million dollar homes paying less tax than people in Smithtown!

The costs of running the towns out there is no more than it is to run towns further west; it might be less, given that population denisty is less, they can get away with a smaller school system, etc.  And the tourists lead to a lot of sales tax revenue.  So the tax rate can be quite a bit lower.  

 

If it takes an average of $10,000 or $15,000 taxes per house to run the town here in Babylon, it very possibly doesn't require a lot more, and maybe less, per average house in the Hamptons.  So a mansion is taxed not too much more than an ordinary home is taxed further west.

 

I see that same thing comparing taxes on my place on Long Island with my place in Connecticut.  Here, I live in a modest low ranch in a blue-collar neighborhood with only 1/3 acre of land.  My place in Connecticut is a bigger high ranch, in a more affluent neighborhood, with far better schools, set back off the road on an acre of land that backs up on a wooded conservation easement that will never be built on.  The Connecticut house is worth 6 or 8 times what my Babylon house is worth.  Yet I pay lower taxes in Connecticut than I do in Babylon; a big reason for that is that, up in Greenwich, my place is considered low-value (one of the recent real estate ads I got talked about "the low-priced market--houses under $3 million).  The big estates and waterfront mansions pay enough that taxes on what we might think of as a more normal place are low compared to Long Island.

Edited by CWitek

"I have always believed that outdoor writers who come out against fish and wildlife conservation are in the wrong business. To me, it makes as much sense golf writers coming out against grass.."  --  Ted Williams

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2 hours ago, outtasight said:

I was shocked when I seen the taxes on some of the Hamptons houses. Mulit million dollar homes paying less tax than people in Smithtown!

My Amagansett taxes do not include water, sewer, garbage and I have volunteer fire dept and ambulance. The local elementary school (precovid) averaged 8 students per class.  Normal years 90% of the population arrives memorial day and leaves on labor day. The 19K I pay in property taxes pay do not feel cheap (7k to the school).

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20 hours ago, Cpalms said:

My Amagansett taxes do not include water, sewer, garbage and I have volunteer fire dept and ambulance. The local elementary school (precovid) averaged 8 students per class.  Normal years 90% of the population arrives memorial day and leaves on labor day. The 19K I pay in property taxes pay do not feel cheap (7k to the school).

We've got garbage and sewer in Babylon, but taxes don't include water and we also have a volunteer fire dept.  But here, the school taxes are a much greater portion of the overall bill.

"I have always believed that outdoor writers who come out against fish and wildlife conservation are in the wrong business. To me, it makes as much sense golf writers coming out against grass.."  --  Ted Williams

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12 mins ago, CWitek said:

We've got garbage and sewer in Babylon, but taxes don't include water and we also have a volunteer fire dept.  But here, the school taxes are a much greater portion of the overall bill.

yep school taxes are the big portion of the bill

 

Hamptons, Montauk all flooded with City folk who thinks their sh*t don't stink, have a buddy in southampton full time resident, says he hates the place now went to the toilets with all the idiots that came in after covid, richy rich walking into places saying i'll take all the ice you got, i'll take all the meat you got etc...

 

just looked Montauk manor wants $1500/night so i guess they are doing fine 

 

City will crumble as will mass transit if NYC doesn't pick back up

 

If you try to change it, you will ruin it. Try to hold it, and you will lose it.

 

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

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43 mins ago, Sandflee said:

 

City will crumble as will mass transit if NYC doesn't pick back up

 

It's going to be interesting to see what New York City, and particularly Manhattan, becomes.

 

There is still some manufacturing in the outer boroughs, but it is no longer a manufacturing center.  It is no longer an important port.  It remains an air transport hub, and Penn Station remains a rail transit hob, and will likely remain so post-COVID, but people traveling to the airports and to Penn have no need to set foot in the city that lies outside the transportation facilities.

 

Remote working, hastened along by COVID, is teaching companies that they no longer need to pay high rents for Manhattan office space.  They can improve their bottom line considerably by alloiwing people more opportunities to work from home.  And if working from home has some minor impacts on productivity (although I always found that it made me more productive, and my wife is now discovering the same thing), that loss is likely substantially offset by all of the costs saved by not maintaining a big office complex.

 

And if you don't have a lot of people moving in and out of their offeces, the shops and restaurants take a big hit.  Former Manhattan residents moving to the suburbs provides another big hit, as most of those folks were wealthy and spent freely on luxuries.

 

Post-COVID tourism, should it pick up, will take up a fair amount of the slack, but the office workers spent a lot on food, and on various items that they picked up near their office at lunch so they wouldn't have to go out again when they got home.

 

Which leaves you, best case, with a city that is a probably crippled tourist destination, with museums, theaters and sport and concert venues, but also with a lot of the smaller businesses hurting.  With the wealthy moving elsewhere--and perhaps not coming back, particularly in light of the city's heavy tax burden--you can easily see residential and commercial property values falling, the tax base eroding, and more taxes falling on the backs of the already badly-burdened middle class, which will continue to trickle out of the city, again causing tax revenues to fall while the expenses of managing the financial burdens, if anything, increase.

 

It's possible that immigrants will keep things from falling too far; anyone who owns property in Brooklyn or Queens has probably been approached by someone not born in this country willing to pay copious quantities of cash for their real estate.  But is that enough?

 

I think one of the big impacts of COVID will be a relization that the traditional city--particularly the big, crowded, unpleasant places like Manhattan, where you're forced into too-close conduct with people who seldom bathe but frequently urinate in public--has lost much of its purpose, although more spread-out urban areas, such as Houston, Seattle, or even Boston and Chicago, might not feel it so badly.

"I have always believed that outdoor writers who come out against fish and wildlife conservation are in the wrong business. To me, it makes as much sense golf writers coming out against grass.."  --  Ted Williams

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Southampton school district has one of the lowest tax rates on the Island due to the large number of multi million dollar homes that carry most of the burden. We're hit wit just over 2K for our 700K assessed home .

IN FAVOR OF COMMERCIAL FISHING AND SURFING THE NORTH SIDE

MAY THE RICH GET RICHER!!

FISH ARE FOOD!!

UA MAU KA EA O KA AINA IKA PONO O HAWAII

 

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