House hunting in Connecticut

You'll see lots of signs for Raveis, so http://www.raveis.com/ might be good.

http://www.prudentialct.com/ is pretty good - you can create searches and save them. Which towns are you interested in?

You can use realtor.com to get most of the listings. Which town?
We lived in Connecticut briefly - happy to share my impressions FWIW.
Tina
(Brooklyn broker)

We are looking at Fairfield County - Darien and New Canaan. Of course for their much touted school system. Husband would spend more time working there so it might make sense for us to move. However, I still am based in NY (but I have the option to work from home-at least I hope so). I know they are both nice towns, but for some reason I'm not keen on this. I like my small NY apartment - just wish I had more kitchen and storage!

I fled Fairfield county six years ago-best thing I ever did. I find the atmosphere to be oppressive and uber-controlled. If I have to choose a town, though, it will be Westport, the only one that shows some diversity and cosmopolitan flavor.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I just checked these websites-they look great. Houses are a headache, but need to start somewhere. On the one hand, NY=perpetual maintenance, paying for a garage, expensive price per sq ft, crowded schools. CT=houses=take care of your own maintenance, buying a second car, need to drive to get anywhere. But freedom from co-op boards is tempting...

mimi-what was oppressive and uper-controlled about the atmosphere? I feel that dealing with co-op boards can be hit or miss here. Maintenance is a perpetual expense, to say nothing about the taxes.

http://windermereonthelake.com/
We visited the development this weekend , it looks really great

looks like connecticut's answer to the apthorp.

Dryships-thanks for the link to windmere. Definitely not our budget though.

kands10016 - if you do decide to move, I strongly suggest renting at first. When I have clients who are considering relocating I always ask "do you like living in New York City?" It sounds as if you do. Which means that despite the highly-rated schools and gorgeous geography (it sure is pretty up there), you may simply not like it. And if you don't, you don't want to be stuck in a house you can't sell. If you do like it, you'll approach your purchase with a more nuanced sense of the neighborhoods.

We lived in Rowayton - cheaper than Darien, closer than New Canaan, and a decent elementary school. Great boating, adorable town beach with playground, Shakespeare in the park on the Five Mile River. Was once a sweet fishing village. Parking permits available on an annual first-come, first-serve basis. You can walk to a lot of stuff. I we were going to love living out of the city, I think we would have loved it there. But we didn't. We sold our house at a loss and hightailed it back to Brooklyn.

We don't regret it at all, though. We refer to it as our Junior Year Abroad. But we would have saved a little money and heartache if we had rented instead of buying.

Tina
(Brooklyn broker)

"http://windermereonthelake.com/
We visited the development this weekend , it looks really great"

For four million dollars, I'd expect more than aluminum siding.

Def. echo mimi's comment re: westport.
Rowayton is a nice town but you can't compare the school systems. Rowayton is not actually a town, it is part of Norwalk and therefore a part of the Norwalk school system (one of the worst in fairfield county ... although, yes, the elementary school is decent). There is no county government in CT and all municipal offerings are completely controlled by the individual towns/cities ... so the town that you live in makes a big difference (Schools, beaches, golf courses etc -- for example, you can't play at the westport golf course without being invited if you live in rowayton and you'll pay a $30 fee to park at the beaches if you don't live in the town etc.). The towns that would be considered the "nicest" in CT are:
Darien
Westport
New Canaan (the only non-costal town)
Greenwich

then you have:
Fairfield
Northern parts of Stamford
Wilton
Weston
Ridgefield

All of these towns have solid school systems and a lot to offer but do not have the same "snob appeal" and are relatively less expensive than the above 4.

Mimi's comment about Westport is true but it depends on what you like. Wetport has a lot of finance people but it also has a heavy art/entertainment industry influence ... Harvey Weinstein, Phil Donahue, Michael bolton, Joanne Woodward (and until recently, Paul Newman) etc. live in town. It also draws heavinly from the advertising world...it has more of an artsy feel and a more liberal population.

Darien is mostly "white finance people"... also referred to as "Arian Darien". New Canaan has very charming downtown but is also fairly monotonous. Greenwich has a lot to offer and is the best known area in CT but the town is really a division of mega rich and just wealthy and the separation is felt (exclusive club vs. semi-exclusive club).

Anyhow, it all depends on what you are looking for but do you homework ... to outsiders CT all feels the same but once you start living there you realize how different all of the towns are ... a 10 minute drive can be a world away ... it's a very complicated state :)

RENY2011's post is excellent. The 10 minute drive = world away phenomenon he describes is all the more reason to rent first!

Tina
(Brooklyn broker)

I was raised in CT - in a small town in Fairfield County, next to Danbury. It was not a poor town by any means, but not as wealthy as ridgefield or weston. Now I live in Manhattan, and will never move back to CT. My wife and I will certainly not be raising our kids in CT.

I suppose the positives of CT are obvious - its cheaper, you can get your own house, its safer.

Here are some of the things that I would consider to be negatives having grown up in CT. IF you don't have kids, many of these may not matter to you:

-The public school that I went to was >90% white and <1% black, which I do not consider to be a good thing. It was just incredibly homogeneous overall.

-95% of the stores close at 9pm during the week, and 10pm on the weekends.

-Good luck finding certain types of food within 20 mins of home - latin, ethiopian and soul for example. If there is only one restaurant that serves a specific type of food, there's a good chance it won't compare to nyc.

-You have to drive everywhere. Repeat - you have to drive everywhere. Everyone goes to the bars or the house parties and then drives home. Every year around winter or graduation times there would be multiple deaths from teenagers flipping over their cars.

-The metronorth trains are very expensive. If you have more than 1 person, you're typically better off driving to the city.

-I was raised on a dead end street where everyone know each other. It was like a gossip echo chamber that you could not avoid. And the town was small enough (~20,000ppl) that everyone knew everyone else's business.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents. Good luck with your house searching. Also be sure to check the water pressure in the house, and whether or not there are sewers. My parents just had to put out huge amount of money to hookup to the town sewer.

Second Tina on the renting. I seriously considered CT a few years ago and rented there for a short time. The part of town I thought I wanted to live in changed after I rented, so now if I ever make the move, I'm much more familiar with which streets I want to live on. If I didn't live there, I wouldn't have had a sense of which are the better streets versus just the so-so ones.

Some towns have communities of houses which are in fact condos, so you pay common charges and the association takes care of the physical maintenance, so you should investigate those. West Lyon Farm in Greenwich for example.

I'm considering renting as well, though in my search, anything "nice" costs as much as a mortgage (though I haven't seen anything in person, just through ads on CL and RE sites). I also thought we could save some money but doesn't seem like it would be the case if we rented. I would want any place to be nice enough to compensate for living far from NY. The purpose of renting would be to see if we like the area, but the thought of being nomadic over the next five years is a turnoff for me. I've moved 4 times in the last 5 years (due to both personal and professional circumstances) so I would really like to find a place to call home.

I will give an update after this weekend.

Thanks everyone for all the good advice!

There are lots of summer rentals in Westport. Just a thought. It's a great town.

Kands, I know a lot of people that had the same experience we had: wanting to get out of the hassle, give the kids a calmer life, close to nature, good schools, etc. The fact is that you happen to smoke a cigarette in a party and next thing you know is nobody wants their children to play with yours (I've seen this.) I know a great guy, a lawyer & trust fund son that quitted law to become a teacher after his 3rd kid was born. He was stopped after having two beers and showed up in the police report in Wilton's newspaper. They had to move. What I am trying to say is that it is one of the most conformist place I've been. It seems ok, like, we are totally normal anyway, and we don't have nothing to hide. But then, you feel babysitted in daily basis. And the boredom is such it just made me wonder if I was anything other than a mother. Please, rent first. It took me 2 years to sell my wonderful Wilton house. It was a big pain in the neck but I was lucky enough to get out before the crash.

And Darien, Greenwich and New Canaan represents a lot of what went wrong with our system to begin with....1 million bucks rock fences...2 million to landscape the garden...4 thousand dollars cashmere blankets....2k a month gardener....

I am a little in Mimi's and Tina's camp. We have never lived in CT, but lived in a bordering and similar area of Northern Westchester. It was beautiful, and we didn't leave because of any dissatisfaction (one of our children has special needs and the best school was here in Manhattan). But now that we have been in the city over a year, we realize how much we love it and how much better it works for our family. There are almost no working moms in the suburbs that are that far away from NYC (I think it's different in lower Westchester or other closer-in suburbs, FWIW). In many ways we found it to be a very retro environment -- in the Cheever sense. There was no diversity and the hyper-focus on the schools, while it results in excellence, has some creepy aspects as well. I concur in the recommendation to rent first because it's a very different experience. But I do understand the desire to put down roots. We sold our house up there, and have been renting ever since. I am a total nester and don't like feeling impermanent or unsettled. But for now, it's the best situation for us.

Our reason for targetting CT is that my husband could end up working there. He told me that if I really wanted to we could stay in the city, but that would mean 2 hr commute (roundtrip) every day for him (or at least 3 or 4 days). While that's generous of him, that would mean less time with our baby. I work from home 50% so I could probably continue this so moving out wouldn't necessarily mean a horrendous commute for me.

Our weekend was a complete bust (househunting-wise, though we did get some important errands taken care of). I made appts with 2 properties that were FSBO. The other appts were set up by a broker. Initially, I checked out prudential.com, identified a few properties, etc and my first call was to the listing agency. I didn't get the broker who listed, but I had a conversation with someone, told her my requirements, and then proceeded to e-mail her a list of properties I had identified as properties I would be interested in seeing.

Later in the afternoon, she emailed me back, with an attached exclusive broker agreement (meaning that we would be locked with that person for x amt of time, for specific towns, and tried to include all of Fairfield County). It also stipulated that we would pay her a fee if we bought something (which I didnt understand, since what I've seen the seller's broker normally splits the total fee)

I was hesitant about signing it just to see properties and my husband felt the same way. I asked a couple of people about it and they agreed that we shouldn't sign it. I texted her that we were not going to sign the agreement, but didn't realize she had an emergency to deal with so our appointments were passed on to someone else in her office. So he called us to try to convince us to go with them, but we were thrown off by this contract and indicated that we were not in any rush, so we just wanted time to see if other brokers would do this to us.

We will continue to look but are not in a rush. Home prices appear to be coming down and I'm not looking for a McMansion. Just something with potential that we can make a home. Hopefully the rent in our current apt will come down so we can save more towards a downpayment. We liked the town of Westport, from our limited time there. I think I am a nester as well - I just wish my nest were a little bit bigger with more storage.

mimi, tina, and everyone - thanks again for your insight.

sorry to hear the weekend was a bust. i've had the contract issue before, but all i did was sign a contract that was effective FOR THAT DAY only. totally agree that including all of fairfield is completely unreasonable. plus, she doesn't seem like such a great communicator at all, passing the appt's along.

Do you need to commute to NYC?

I found that things get REALLY nice when the New Haven line ends.

Madison, Guildford, etc. Some gorgeous towns on the water, definitely not as snobby as the money towns on the train side. Very new england, and you're still under 2 hours from manhattan.

The end of the New Haven line is not under 2 hours from Manhattan. I made the trip out there 2 years ago and it was over 2 hours.

nyc10022 i agree that Madison is a gorgeous town and seems low key. I have relatives there but I havent visited in 5 years. I remember they were near some nice beaches and the towns were nice. I also had relatives in Groton and I remember spending many lazy summers there with them. It was great! BUT, I do need to factor in a commute to NYC for the time being.

"The end of the New Haven line is not under 2 hours from Manhattan. I made the trip out there 2 years ago and it was over 2 hours."

Alpine, alpine, why is it whenever you open your mouth, you are wrong?

Most trains are 100 to 105 minutes Grand Central to New Haven (end of the, uh, New Haven line). A couple are under 100 minutes. None are 120 minutes or more.

I know you got your education in New Jersey, but let me clear this up for you... that is under 2 hours.

Want to try again though? (I'm sure you will)

"nyc10022 i agree that Madison is a gorgeous town and seems low key. I have relatives there but I havent visited in 5 years. I remember they were near some nice beaches and the towns were nice. I also had relatives in Groton and I remember spending many lazy summers there with them. It was great! BUT, I do need to factor in a commute to NYC for the time being. "

Yeah, thats why I was asking about the commute. I wouldn't do it for the daily either.

If you need to be closer.. one of the hidden deals was also black rock (really bridgeport, but they try and "separate", but don't quite get the top prices because of it).