truenorth418
Full time employment: Posting here.
Congratulations.
I agree with the general comment on housing.
Just curious... If you sold your 275 sq ft apt in Manhattan... what would it fetch?
If you moved to a lower cost location... would you sell it or rent it out?
In the area of Manhattan where I live, co-op apartments cost about $900 per square foot. That means my 275 sq foot shoebox could sell for as much as $250k under the right circumstances. I recently searched some of the local real estate websites and there are a lot of studio apartments for sale at the moment. Since mine is not in the best condition, maybe I could sell mine for around $225k. So after state and local capital gains taxes, commissions, and other expenses I would probably walk away with a little less than $200k, more than enough to afford a very nice place in most other parts of the country.
The NYC real estate market is very unique. I could rent my place out, but since I own a co-op and not a condo, I am restricted by my co-op board's rules which restrict rentals to 2 years out of every 5. This is pretty standard when it comes to NYC co-ops.