Very positive article about Jersey City. Despite it's faults I find downtown Jersey city a great place to live and work. As the political climate charges the city as a whole will only get better.

The paper of record had a couple of mistakes..the most glaring being the wrong picture of the Bright Street house. ( Which is a very nice house)

I'm sure most of us were happy to see our fair city mentioned in conjunction toa destination for living as opposed to graft, council resignations and misuse of funds.

I take offense with the comment that the owners of the house that could have been in Architectural Digest did not care to negotiate. We are the owners, and were never presented with an offer from Ms. Homenick. Not sure if she dropped the ball, or if her agent gave her misinformation about our listing.

I take offense to the Bright Street comment. And yes, I live on Bright Street.

I find cultural parades every couple of weeks vibrant. I find concerts, festivals, and farmer's markets at Grove Plaza vibrant. I find movies every Wednesday night in the park just in front of my house vibrant. I find neighbors sitting on their stoops and chatting over wine vibrant. I find street fairs and block parties vibrant. I find Octoberfest last week on Grove Street vibrant. I find people eating on sidewalk tables vibrant. I find the guy playing the saxophone on Grove Street vibrant.

Jersey City offers all of the above.

Coincidentally, I do NOT find Newport vibrant. I do like Michael Anthony's in the summertime though.

im totally fine with the upper echelon (douchebags) moving out of jersey city to upper saddle river while i continue to enjoy my 20 minute commute to work from my affordable apartment in a sleepy urban village.

Damn, those unabated properties hardly pay any taxes. Can't wait for the re-val to make things a bit more fair.

it is just plainly disgusting how these yuppies are destroying this area.

Quote:

Poor sap..... no one told her about the coming reval.

She's gonna get killed.....

This Time Around, Something Citified

By JOYCE COHEN
Published: October 8, 2010

AFTER the younger of her two children left for college a year ago, ?I was empty-nesting like crazy,? Kathi Homenick said. She was eager to leave her two-story detached wood frame house on a lovely, leafy street in Bayside, Queens. With the kids gone, there was no reason to stay in a neighborhood that seemed way too suburban.


In Jersey City on Coles Street, a house with original details got away.


An oddly laid-out Bright Street house was on a block lacking charm.


A condo in a former synagogue on Fifth Street had a galley kitchen.


Kathi Homenick on Fifth Street in front of her three-story row house.

?I didn?t feel like I had a lot of ties in Queens,? said Ms. Homenick, who grew up on the Jersey Shore and had moved to Queens from Long Island after separating from her husband. ?It is a Long Island Rail Road stop, not a subway stop, so I was just bored. If I had all the money in the world, I would live in the middle of Greenwich Village.?

But she didn?t, so she decided that the next best place might well be downtown Jersey City. It had the city vibe she yearned for. Housing prices were reasonable. Colleagues and friends lived there already. So, two years ago, she began scoping out the neighborhood online and attending open houses.

?I started getting an education so when I was ready to sell and purchase, I felt I knew the market pretty well,? said Ms. Homenick, 48, a graduate of Adelphi University who works in the Flatiron district as the director of production and Web development for the Vendome Group, a business-to-business publisher.

She wanted a brownstone or a brick row house with its own entrance and a yard for her terrier, Maggie. ?Not having to walk her on winter mornings is a big plus,? she said.

She needed three bedrooms and two bathrooms, ?in case anybody boomerangs back home,? she said. Her daughter, Kelly, 18, is studying education at Manhattan College in Riverdale in the Bronx, while her son, Chris, 23, works as a sound engineer and lives in Flushing.

Her price range was in the high $600,000s. People advised her to wait out the soft real estate market and sell her Queens house for a higher price before buying in Jersey City, but that seemed pointless. Prices rose in lockstep, so if she made $50,000 more on the Bayside sale, she said, she would end up spending $50,000 more on a Jersey City purchase. Besides, she didn?t want to wait.

Last spring, she contacted Phil Rivo of the Armagno Agency in downtown Jersey City, whom she knew through friends.

?She wanted Old World charm and a lot of original detail,? plus proximity to a PATH station, Mr. Rivo said. There wasn?t much to choose from ? maybe one property per week would hit the market, he said. And most of those required more work than Ms. Homenick was willing to undertake.

She saw a house she liked a lot on a pretty block of Coles Street. She appreciated its brick walls, tin ceilings and ?weird add-ons,? including a deck reachable through only one room. It was listed at $619,000, with taxes of nearly $7,500 a year. But she was too late; the house quickly sold for $610,000.

A house on Bright Street was listed at a low $560,000, with taxes of $7,000. But the layout was impractical. From the two top-floor bedrooms, access to the bathroom meant a trip downstairs and through the kitchen. Furthermore, she said, ?there are streets in downtown Jersey City that are incredibly charming, but that one is not.?

Fifth Street, however, overflowed with charm. A brick row house there had been carefully restored. The landscaped back garden, complete with koi pond, ?looked like it belonged in Architectural Digest,? Ms. Homenick said. But she didn?t think the house was worth its asking price of $749,500, with taxes of $6,300. The sellers did not care to negotiate, she said. It?s still on the market.

On the same Fifth Street block, she briefly considered a three-story condominium in a converted synagogue. The unit, once the rabbi?s dwelling, had its own entrance and seemed sufficiently private. But, because of Maggie, she was uneasy about sharing the yard. And she wasn?t keen on the small galley kitchen. The apartment later sold for its asking price, $569,000, with a monthly common charge of $375 and taxes of nearly $6,000 a year.

Yet another house for sale on the block, a three-story brick row house, circa 1870, with a pretty bay window, was close to what Ms. Homenick wanted. It was listed for $695,000, with taxes of $4,800.

A recent renovation had stripped away the kind of detail that she was looking for. On the ground level, some walls had been removed, creating a large open space from several smaller rooms. ?It is a choice, and not a choice I would have made,? Ms. Homenick said.

She had been holding out for either more original detail or a livable place that she could eventually renovate to her own style. But by late spring, with her Queens house in contract, she needed to get moving. The row house was sunny and spacious, with the three bedrooms and two baths she wanted. ?It was in my price range,? she said, ?and I decided to go with it.?

The renovation ?made it feel bigger, but aesthetically she didn?t like it as much,? Mr. Rivo said, ?but it was a tradeoff she was willing to take.?

In midsummer, Ms. Homenick bought the house for $650,000. Her Bayside property had sold for $655,000 to a newlywed couple, so it was an even swap, she said.

She would have kept the original fireplaces in her new home. The living room wall projects slightly in two places where they used to be, ?so it?s not as though you can put a couch against the wall,? she said. ?It didn?t create a clean line.?

The backyard is a concrete slab painted blue. She jokes that it is a yard she can vacuum.

The price was ?relatively low for a single standalone town home? in excellent condition, said the listing agent, Matt Brown of Hudson Realty Group at Halstead Property New Jersey. Six years ago he sold the house for $480,000 to the couple who renovated it. They have now moved to Texas.

Though Ms. Homenick thought she knew her Jersey City neighborhood well, she likes it even better than she expected. She had ?the pleasant surprise coming up from the PATH train the first day, and the farmer?s market was there,? she said.

She saves the car for big shopping trips and nighttime excursions to Manhattan. ?It?s great to walk to restaurants and not have to drive anywhere,? Ms. Homenick said. ?City living is what I knew I wanted.?

E-mail: thehunt@nytimes.com