Moving to NY--advice needed

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I’m finally moving out of my present digs and to the great city of NY.

I’ll be saying “sayonara” to my present digs on Dec. 31. I’ll be staying with my boyfriend while I find a job and get my own place to live. I’m very excited about the move. I’ll be graduating (I’m finishing my master’s thesis)! I’ll be living near my boyfriend! I’ll get to be in the middle of the great City that Never Sleeps! And I’ll get to meet lots of you at NY and NY Metro Area Dopefests!

I can’t say that my happiness at the prospect of moving isn’t tempered by a little anxiety about all the things I’ll need to do before I ship out. I’m feeling a little clueless and overwhelmed. I’m appealing to the collective wisdom of the SDMB in an attempt to make my moving as stress-free as it can be. If you have any tips or experiences you’d be willing to share on how to make this move go as smoothly as possible, I’d appreciate it immensely.

Luckily, I’m living in an apartment that I rent from month-to-month, so I don’t have to worry about breaking the lease or selling my place. And I’m single, with no kids, so the only person I’m responsible for is myself in all this. Both of those things make my life a lot easier than it could be. That doesn’t mean that this is going to be genuinely easy, though. Here are the things I’d like to learn more about:

  1. Selling off/giving away my stuff

Having been to NY many times, I realize what a PITA it would be to move all my things. Not to mention that I’d have nowhere to put them when I got into town! I’d like to sell off as much of my stuff as I can and ship the rest.

Those of you who’ve tried to sell off all your stuff before you moved–how long did it take you? How would you do it differently, if you had to do it over again? When’s the latest I should start posting ads, etc. in order to sell all (or at least most) of my stuff? What stuff did you end up having to give away or dump?

  1. Tips for packing what I want to keep.

Does anyone know a good way to plan out how much time you need to pack when you’re moving? Is there some good way to gauge how long it takes to get your stuff in order before you take off?

  1. What to do with my car.

I’ve got a car. It’s a nice, dependable car. It’s a 1995 Toyota Corolla, so it’s getting on in years, and it’s not all that aesthetically pleasing–but it gets me around pretty reliably, and it’s got many more years of use in it, I think. I wouldn’t even be thinking of selling it off unless I were planning on moving to somewhere like NY, where it doesn’t really make that much sense for me to have a car.

The thing is, we might not stay in NY for more than a year. My boyfriend’s looking for work, and where he goes depends on who takes him and on what deal he can get (he’s looking for a postdoc, so he might not get to stay in NY without giving up working in his field.) Wherever he ends up working, I’d like to join him as soon as possible.

That means we might need a car in not all that long after I move to NY. I’m thinking of garaging the car somewhere in NJ, or CT, or even in upstate NY, until I knew whether or not we’d want or need to use my little Scribblemobile. If there were some way to leave my car in a garage for relatively cheap, it might make financial sense to let it sit there until we need it, rather than selling it off for cash here and now.

Added into this is the fact that I’ve got some pretty heavy student loans, so I really don’t want to have to buy or lease a new or new-to-me car for quite a while.

Is garaging the car even a semi-reasonable idea, or should I be looking to sell my trusty steed before I leave town?

  1. What things should I do that I probably wouldn’t think of? What did you wish you had done before you moved?

Thanks to everyone for any suggestions or help you could give me.

2

Do you have an Apartment lined up already?
Do you know what you can afford to spend per month?
It is possible to get a nice apartment in the very nice neighborhood of Bayridge in Brooklyn for under $1000 and park on the street. My Brother did this for two years until a few months ago. There are also some affordable neighborhoods in the North Bronx and other areas of Brooklyn.
Try to be near a subway line, where ever you end up. It is by far the best way to travel in NY.
If you keep your car, try to keep the insurance as long as possible in your home state, the only places around as expensive are California and NJ.

When you get here, try to make it to a Jersey Dopefest too. :wink:

Jim

3

My brother once sold all his belongings so that he could go travel the world. Well, he packed up what he wanted to keep long-term (and stored it in my house), but sold everything else, including all his furniture. About a month before he planned to leave, he posted signs for an “estate sale,” marked everything in his apartment with price tags, and managed to get most of it sold over a weekend.

As for the car, do you have family or friends who can house the car for you for a while? My brother did that, as well (my parents got the car), and after he’d been gone a year or so, authorized them to sell it.

How exciting for you! Good luck with the move!

4

I have a friend who left his car in Jersey while he lived in Manhattan. It took him about an hour to train/bus to the lot, which wasn’t that bad since he only used it weekends.

As for packing, I can do all that in a day or two (if someone is looking after the kid). But I’ve done this several times… Give yourself a week with nothing else to do. Not even seeing friends to say goodbye-- do that ahead of time.

5

When I was coming back from Miami to Spain, I put up signs in my apartment complex and sold everything within 48 hours.
I’d already packed in my suitcase or shipped everything I wanted to keep.

6

Thanks so much for your advice, guys!

Anyone else have other tips? How about suggestions on cheap but not nasty places to live in NYC or its environs? I’ll want to start looking for an apartment as soon as I have a job.

7

What is your budget? How cheap is “cheap”? $2,000, $1,000, $500? Are you willing to live with roommates or do you want your own place?

8

Well, welcome to NYC! When I saw the thread title I had a faint, faint hope that you might be moving to Upstate. But I do recommend if you have the opportunity to visit upstate. We’re not a bunch of bumfucks and it is heartbreakingly beautiful up here in the fall.

Other than that, good luck!

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Anaamika–I might be coming upstate in a year or two. I’m interested in a lab at the University of Rochester. I won’t be starting on a PhD in September of 2007, but I might in September of 2008. There are also some people I might want to work with at Cornell. As an added plus, there’s a postdoc open there that my BF is interested in.

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Eyebrows of Doom–When I say “cheap,” I mean “good value for what you pay.” (Or, at least, good value for the money in NY terms.) I’d really like to have my own place, and I expect that I’ll be earning enough to do that. I don’t know what my budget is, yet, because I don’t know what I’ll be earning when I get a job.

But, in general–what places are at least nice enough, at least close enough to public transit to not make commuting utterly miserable, and that give you good value for the money on rent?

11

Look into Bayridge in Brooklyn. It is the South West section closest to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Link is to a Google Map of the area. The far North of the Bronx, near Yonkers can be affordable also.
Good Luck, expect to pay over $800 per month and probably over $1000.
15 years ago Hoboken was a great alternative, but it now costs more for Hoboken than parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn. Stay out of Staten Island, the limited mass transit is too slow. You want to be near a subway, Ell or Path Train.
The section of the Bronx I linked to has plenty of parking as much of it is two family houses. I think Bayridge is the nicest affordable part of the city with subway access, but I am sure there are other parts of Brooklyn and Queens, I am not aware of.

Jim

12

You can pack all your clothes, linens, towels, etc. in Hefty garbage bags, the type with the handles you pull to close. Much easier than boxes.

13

I just discovered the Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx – the REAL Italian neighborhood, and right next to the lovely Bronx Botanical garden. Good food, safe, and I believe quite cheap.

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Funny you should mention this neighborhood! It’s a whole of two blocks away from where my BF lives now, so it’s where I’ll be camping out when I first get to NYC.

I recommended a stroll down Arthur Avenue, and pizza at Giovanni’s there, in a recent thread on NYC restaurant recommendations.

15

My Parents use to live there. Unfortunately it was before I was born. So I only return to Arthur Avenue as a tourist.
Scribble, if you can afford it, that would probably be my first choice of a neighborhood. I thought it was pricey now if you weren’t there for 20+ years with rent control. Hopefully I am wrong.

Jim

16

Check out Kew Gardens & Forest Hills in Queens. Convenient to midtown manhattan, nicely inexpensive (many rent-controlled apartments) and acessible by multiple forms of mass transit, plus a large city park. Plus, no “hipster tax” like in Brooklyn these days. :slight_smile: Astoria is also popular, but less well-served by transit.

My hot tip for moving:
You CANNOT take a moving truck on anything called a “Parkway” For example, the Grand Central parkway, the Jackie Robinson Parkway (AKA Interboro, connects bklyn & queens) or Long Island parkways (annoying, because there’s an IKEA in Hicksville) Anything “Expressway” is fine. The signs say “No Commercial Vehicles” which doesn’t exactly bring moving trucks to mind if you’re not thinking of it. The reason is that these roads have low-clearance bridges. Believe you do NOT want to be That Guy that gets stuck under a bridge.

17

Value? New York appartment? I recognize those words individually but they don’t make sense all jumbled together like that.

A decent studio or 1BR in Manhattan or Hoboken will run you around $2000-2400. I think the Upper East Side is cheaper but there’s limited subway access up there. Especially if you live on York. At least until the Second Ave line goes in. Any day now. :smiley: Brooklyn and Queens is cheeper but I don’t know specifics.

Jersey City, NJ is also an option. It’s on the Path line and close to Hoboken with it’s many bars. You can also try Union City or Weehawken. They’re right around the same area just over the Hudson. Unlike Hoboken though you will still need your car.

I recommend Manhattan if you can afford it. It’s quite a unique experience.

18

Look cool…and interesting but with a touch of dangerous…it works you make friends quicker

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You can get a lot more space for your dollar in Manhattan if you go up to Washington Heights/Inwood, that’s the uppermost section of the island. I used to live on the Upper East, near 1st ave & 86th street. It’s a decent enough commute to Grand Central, but it will start to suck if you have to go cross town or change trains too many times. That’s kind of the rub, depending on where your job is, different areas are easier commutes.

You can garage your car in NYC for a “reasonable” fee, but I wouldn’t do it unless you intended to use the thing. Better to sell the car, save up the insurance/storage money, and buy another one when you decide you need a car again. Cheap insurance/storage on an old car can easily be $250/mo. I had a car that was essentially “free” and decided to keep it, but I used it at least twice a month to get out of town on errands and to visit people.

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Thanks for your advice, everyone!

You’ve suggested some areas to live in that I wouldn’t have thought of and given me some tips that I never would have known about otherwise (a special thanks to Hello Again for cluing me in about the parkways–I had no idea a moving van could get stuck there!)

Thanks again for your tips! And keep 'em coming!

Those of you who know something useful about moving–to NYC (or its environs), or just about moving in general–please let me know what you know, if you haven’t posted already!

You guys are the best.