All of the counties north of New York City are great places for a second home in upstate New York. Generally one of the most important issues facing city folk in deciding where the best place is how long will it take to get there. When I moved up to East Durham in 1986 it had to be in the 2 ½- 3 hour driving range (this of course does not include traffic time.) While driving time was most important to me, today the younger crowd is much more ecological and while time is still one of the most important issues, many now travel by train or bus and this changes the equation considerably. To that end let me show you the public transportation (trains, buses, shuttles and local transportation) options and the best places to look for a home.
I will make some assumptions before I begin to explain these options. The first criteria that I am going to assume is a 3 ½ hour maximum trip (not counting the time from the arriving bus or train station to your upstate home.) I will assume only train or bus transportation. Lastly, as a Realtor® I will remind you that there will be a relationship between these bus and train stations and the price of housing. An example, the closer to NYC the more expensive the housing. The closer to a bus or train station the more expensive.
To begin, below is the northern Amtrack stops and schedules for the Adirondack Route which leaves Penn Station in NYC and travels north to Montreal. If you look at the schedule (below) you will be able to see the timeline for each stop. (Example: If you took the 8:15 am train from NYC to Hudson, NY you would arrive at 10:15 am.)
For additional calculations (east or west of the train stops) it is worth adding 2 minutes per mile to your ultimate destination. Example: If you were to calculate travel time from Penn Station to the Town of Cairo the travel time would be 2 hours (Penn Station to Hudson, NY) plus 28 minutes to Cairo, NY (14 miles west of Hudson, NY) for total travel time of 2 hours 28 minutes. To extrapolate, if you wanted to travel further north you would need to stay closer to the station, if you were willing to spend more for a second home, you could purchase closer to Croton-Harmon, Poughkeepsie or Rhinecliff, NY, the 3 stops closer to NYC which would allow you either a shorter trip or the time to travel to a town east or west and still stay in the same 2 ½ -3 hour travel limit.
Using this schedule and the 3 ½ hour limit you could look all the way up the Hudson River to Saratoga Springs. There is bus service (with 4 routes) from Hudson to Albany through most of the most popular Columbia County towns. For more in depth information for local transportation for Columbia County, Greene County, Dutchess County, Ulster County & Sullivan County for bus routes click HERE. For more information for shuttle services closer to Hudson, click HERE.
The bus transportation availability is a bit more complex.HERE is the Trailway Bus Line map which includes 11 other carriers. For practical purposes this is the most relevant section, which includes the most popular towns from Newburgh to Oneonta and from Poughkeepsie to Stanford. Note the insert from Haines Falls to Hunter. The travel time from Port Authority Terminal (on 42nd Street) to Saugerties is 2 ½ hours, NYC to Phoenicia is 2 hours 45 minutes.
From a real estate POV, the important thing to remember is that while the closer to NYC the higher the hosue prices will be, there are also other variables like hipness, closeness to shopping and activities (like fishing or skiing) that will add value/price to real estate in these towns and hamlets. Towns like Woodstock and Phoenicia will have a premium (for hipness), Windham and Hunter (for views and closeness to skiing), Kingston, Saugerties and Catskill for Hudson River access and any town along the Esopus Creek, Woodland Valley, the East branches of the Delaware, East and West Kills, Batavia Kill and the Catskill Creek for great fishing.
If you haven’t bought a second or retirement home yet, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. Prices upstate are now at levels not found for 15-20 years. We are at a point in time when the price of real estate in these locations reflects not only a much lower cost than just a few years ago but also reflect a 20% to 30% discount on the replacement cost (actual cost of purchasing land, adding infrastructures and building a house.) As with all previous recessions, we won’t know it’s over until we have already gone into the next growth cycle and prices are back up. With most towns in upstate upping their subdivision and construction permitting standards this cost of new construction is bound to increase, making an existing home more valuable. If you haven’t purchased your getaway home yet, now is the time to get off the fence and jump.
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