Sadly, I don't think shoddy construction ever stopped. It's going on somewhere, every day.

A number of years ago, the people in Newport complained about shoddy construction. They said windows were falling out. This was around the year 2000. The city laid off inspectors years earlier and said Newport can inspect their own properties. I also had a civil courtcase about an elevator 'free falling' in which one person said he injured his back. I believe there is a lot of poor construction that took place 20 years ago.

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Wow. Just read through the blog. That is some very depressing testimony from those poor people. Consider my curiosity well and truly satiated regarding Port Tyranny. Thanks for posting Jaded.

Last fall the owners at Port Libert? settled a lawsuit against the developers and construction companies, the charges were shoddy construction and substandard materials. This lawsuit has been in the courts for the past 10+ years.

Stumbled across this interesting blog:
https://portlibertereview.wordpress.com/about/

Sounds like maintenance is super-high owing to past mismanagement, construction defects and litigation. And there may be special assessments to come due to Sandy damage. Yikes. I remember when I first moved to JC a realtor tried to steer me there. Being car-less at the time and looking what was immediately outside the gates, I said "no f*cking way." Besides, I don't do gated communities.

They have shuttles to PATH, and the waterfront pool is awesome. Too bad that The Pointe restaurant won't re-open, the family that runs Caf? Bello in Bayonne and Pizza Masters in the Heights owned it and did a pretty good job there. It was a hidden gem with incredible views.

It does offer parking and you worry less about crime there. In terms of the flooding, I understand some people were flooded and others were not. But downtown and parts of Ward A also face similar issues.

i wouldnt touch this disaster with a 10 feet pole.

1) Terrible neighborhood (outside the gate), terrible school
2) No good public transportation options (it has a ferry)
3) Sky high maintenance fees due to poor management and maintaining that canal waterway mess.
4) Sky high taxes.
5) Right by the water without flood protection

The whole development is a disaster, why would you buy into that mess.

Port Liberte had a 20 year tax abatement which expired. They are assessed at market value according to the time period. A reval would reduce their taxes. As I said on another thread, the condos in JC (non-abated) are paying the highest taxes in JC. I confirmed this with the tax assessor.

I was riding my bike down the newly reopened Hudson Walkway through Port Liberte on Saturday and I was marveling at the townhouses that face the harbor, the Statue and the NYC skyline. I was also thinking about how trashed they must have gotten during Sandy.

Looking on Trulia today I see that quite a few of these townhouses on the water are up for sale, with a four bedroom asking $1.75m with property taxes of almost $31,000!

The pricing seems to be all over the place though - you can find a one-bed apartment with a garage for just $185,000, which is astoundingly cheap, but it's asking a monthly HOA payment of $753 - which is almost as much as the mortgage payment ($875, or thereabouts).

In fact there are a ton of places up for sale across Port Liberte and they can't all be down to Sandy damage - many of them are condos on high floors. There was that lawsuit that settled a couple of years back around poor construction standards, the original plan was for a development two or three times larger than this but the funding never materialized for the later phases, and the sole restaurant in the development never reopened after Sandy. It seems that the entire project has been kind of a shambles.

What is going on with this place? Why are the HOA fees and property taxes so ludicrously expensive? Why are so many residents selling up?