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That is doubtful, given this bit of information from the article:

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$700/mo renting seems like a no brainer to hang onto as long as possible. By buying this place, she not only pays quite a bit more out of pocket each month, she also gets the downside of owning real estate going into an economic slowdown. 100% financing sounds like a terrible idea in a market like this - nothing like infinite leverage!

maybe she saved money all those years and bought the new place CASH so her payments would only be maintence and taxes. Also a lot of rent control aprtments are disgusting as the landlords will do nothing to repair the building unless they are forced to.

So then, she moved from a large 2 bedroom rent controlled apartment in Brooklyn which was costing her $700 presumably with heat included to a SMALLER 2 bedroom in Jersey City "joggable" to Journal Square. For the demotion in size and probably in quality of neighborhood she gets to pay almost 3 times as much per month...$1860 per month (assuming a 30 year fixed mortgage at 6% for the entire amount.)
Add in closing costs, higher insurance costs on the property instead of just contents, possible cost of HEATING and hot water (not mentioned in the article geared to generate interest in Jersey City real estate.) And her transportation costs will rise too...nothing beats a NYC monthly unlimited Metrocard...and anyone on Harrison Avenue will quickly tire of getting back and forth to Journal Square on foot 10 or 12 times a week so that's a crowded slow bus AND the PATH to work and back.


The reason for the move, perhaps her building will go co-op and perhaps the co-oping will be under an eviction plan, are both highly unlikely.

This sounds like another JOE THE PLUMBER story to me.

(In reality, people with rent-controlled 2 bedroom apartments hang onto them longer and harder than their TEETH and landlords almost NEVER get a non-eviction plan approved...certainly not when most of the tenants are paying miniscule rents.)

So again, this is just more Real-Estate-Speak, a language unto itself.

And have you WALKED on Harrison Avenue lately? It's a block north of Cummunipaw.

The Hunt: Life After Rent Control



ON HER OWN LaVerne Walker says becoming a homeowner means hitting a ?certain level of maturity.?

The New York Times
By JOYCE COHEN
Published: October 17, 2008

FOR several years, thoughts of buying a home nagged at LaVerne Walker. She had lived in the same place since she was 10: a spacious two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment in Midwood, Brooklyn, that she took over from her mother. Her rent was $700 a month.

A two-bedroom on Harrison Avenue in Jersey City had noisy neighbors.

She and her friends in an investment club talked incessantly about buying, but ?there was no action,? she said. ?None of us had money to get into the game.?

Her accountant urged her and her husband to buy a home for the tax deduction. ?I said: ?I live in rent control! What part of that don?t you understand?? We couldn?t rationalize paying more? just for some tax savings, she said.

But Ms. Walker, 40, who studied accounting at Marymount Manhattan College and is now the assistant director of financial aid at Weill Cornell Medical College, heard rumors that her building, on Ocean Avenue, might be sold or turn co-op. If it did so under an eviction plan, she could be forced to leave. ?You felt the ground loosening in front of you,? she said.

Last year, she and her husband visited open houses in Brooklyn, and all of the places seemed expensive. Then, last spring, after a divorce, she became more serious about buying a home.

?I wanted something permanent in my life,? she said. ?The melancholy part is that this is something I wanted to do with him.? Still, ?it was time to grow up, whatever that looks like. When I look at friends my age, lifestyle-wise, they have children in college already and have been divorced eons ago, maybe hitting their second marriage.?

Buying a home, she said, would ?represent a certain level of maturity. It allows you to put a check mark on the list of things you desire.?

She decided on a maximum budget of $250,000 for a two-bedroom with easy access to public transportation. In Brooklyn, ?everything was marketed as a luxury condominium,? she said, but she didn?t need that. ?I figured, let me get close to luxury without luxury prices.?

She was drawn to Newark, which seemed to be affordable and improving, and was interested in a foreclosed unit in the Society Hill town house complex. But when she saw an advertisement for a Jersey City apartment for under $100,000, she wondered what so little money would buy.

?At the time, I didn?t know Jersey City,? she said. ?All I knew was Newport Center Mall,? where a former boyfriend shopped for clothes to avoid New York?s sales tax. So last spring, she and a cousin, who lives in South Plainfield, N.J., met at the mall and headed to the bargain apartment, which was near Journal Square.

At first, she couldn?t understand what the agent was saying. He was ?talking about this old man, and said this old man does a lot of cleaning around the property,? Ms. Walker said. She finally figured it out: it was an investment property that came with an elderly tenant.

Later that day, they stopped at the Jersey City Heights office of Liberty Realty. An agent there, Maida Negron, was glad to show them places nearby.

Ms. Walker wasn?t interested in a duplex condo with a spiral staircase in a former school building on Central Avenue. At $255,000, it was too pricey and too small.

But she would have been willing to bid on a two-bedroom condo in a newly converted six-unit building on Graham Street. The listing price was $249,000 (later reduced to $230,000). The unit had pretty bathroom fixtures, an outdoor deck and a stackable washer and dryer.

Ms. Negron protested. It was too soon to make such a big decision. ?LaVerne was unclear what she liked,? she said. ?She knew nothing about Jersey. I said, ?Don?t be ridiculous ? there are so many other things I will show you that you will love.? ?

Besides, all the units in the Graham Street building were being sold by the developer, so it would be tough for Ms. Walker, who had served in the Navy, to get her Veterans Affairs loan approved. (Such a loan, which allows for 100 percent financing with no down payment, generally requires that 70 percent of units in a condominium be presold.)

The next weekend, Ms. Walker ? with three girlfriends in tow ? continued her hunt closer to Journal Square, where Ms. Negron knew she would get more for her money. When they arrived at a Harrison Avenue two-bedroom condo listed at $225,000, ?it was love,? Ms. Walker said, partly because of the two full bathrooms. ?The building was a little shoddy but you saw potential,? she said.


A duplex on Central Avenue in Jersey City Heights was cute but pricey.


Another unit on Harrison Avenue, with three bedrooms, was roomier.

Ms. Walker offered $220,000 but was outbid. Meanwhile, she had changed her mind about the building. On the last of her many visits, she saw bags of garbage in the hall. When a neighbor exited his apartment, she heard children screaming inside. ?We had been in this building at least four times, and it was quiet as a church,? Ms. Walker said. ?But now I got to see the building with the lights on.?

Initially, she was ambivalent about another Harrison Avenue condo building. She disliked the layout, with one of three bedrooms near the front door. It lacked a washer-dryer, too.

But the friends who looked at it with her loved it. One friend happened to know a couple who lived in the building, and they showed Ms. Walker their apartment. Another friend knew a contractor who came to see the place and raved about it. ?I needed to hear someone else?s opinion, someone who knew about building structure,? Ms. Walker said.

All signs pointed in the right direction. She told herself: ?O.K., chickie, you just need to make a move ? you don?t need to be married to the place, you don?t need to live there forever. Just do it, LaVerne, and take all the risks that come with it.?

For her apartment, of nearly 1,000 square feet ? slightly smaller than her rent-controlled apartment ? she paid the asking price of $230,000. The condo fee is around $390 a month; property taxes are $1,140 a year.

Ms. Walker, who moved in early last month, wasn?t prepared for the difficulty of the move. She assumed she could simply pack everything into large boxes. The first box was too heavy to move. Fortunately, she was able to trade her large boxes for smaller ones. Her brother and a crew of friends pitched in.

As a marathoner, she likes the forced exercise of the walk to the PATH train, even though she sometimes takes her condominium?s free rush-hour van to and from Journal Square. (The superintendent and his wife are the drivers.)

She and some friends have a company, Bodywealth in Motion (bodywealthinmotion.com), which runs wellness seminars and endurance programs. The groups meet in Prospect Park or Central Park, but ?now that I am next to beautiful Lincoln Park,? she said, ?we are hoping to start a walking club out here.?

Having finally made her move, she is thrilled. ?There is something about ownership,? she said. ?I get it now. It creates a sense of completeness in your life. The day I moved in, I sat here and I?m like, ?Wow ? this is yours. You did it.? ?