The Upstate Supercommuters Moving Downstate

Commuters say that parking at Rhinecliff station has been a nightmare since employers started calling workers in the office.
Photo: Tania Barricklo / Courtesy of Daily Freeman

In May 2022, two years in the pandemic and Sunny Jenkins were captivated by what she undertook in the background of a zoom call – a large staircase, a fireplace and a dining table of the farm. The person to whom she spoke lived in the Hudson valley, and Jenkins, who lived in Laurel Canyon with her husband and her young daughter, realized that she could also move there. Her husband was fully distant and she was hybrid (and her own boss, as the founder of a public relations company with customers in New York and AT). Several months later, they had sold their house in Los Angeles and moved into a dream, Four Georgian style bedrooms In Chatham, about two and a half hours north of Midtown Manhattan. The house was completely renovated and seated on two hectares landscapes with a stone terrace and a 2,000 square foot barn. In short, the ideal place for two self -employed workers to work at home.

But Jenkins soon went to the city as much as, if not more, that she did not work at home – while meetings and events in person resumed, she felt more and more the need to attend. “I was definitely optimistic about the implementation, but I don’t think I have fully understood the landscape,” she said. What seemed to be “a fairly fast amtrak tour” was actually almost two hours in each direction, in addition to 25 minutes by car to Hudson station. “Door to door, all took three hours,” she said. Sometimes she stayed at the office, an attic for mixed use in Nomad, but it was difficult to do it regularly with a young girl, so sometimes she would end up doing the whole six -hour transport in a day. However, Jenkins was categorical not to move to the city. “I really love the Hudson valley. I love life style. I loved the house, ”she says. She and her family therefore moved to a rental in Rhinebeck, who cut almost an hour from the round trip. “I just couldn’t manage the yo-yoing,” she says. “We had to be further south.”

Call that the dilemma of the accidental supercute. During the first years of Covid, the purchase of a place two or three hours of Manhattan seemed not only doable but, in many cases, reasonable. Instead of piling up two offices and a peloton in an 800 square feet apartment, you may have a spacious farm, a courtyard and a guest room. Even at inflated prices for childbirth, a million dollars bought much more in Red Hook, New York, than in its Brooklyn counterpart. Stephanie Diamond, the founder of the ListsA community of lists of housing and Alcoas, which lives in the north of the state, has witnessed the wave of interest in real time: “Our category ‘` Seeking Living Space’ ‘was the most complete that it has ever been. ” She has since seen many of those who have moved in the departure of the region: some came to realize The fact of cutting wood and maintaining ancestors to date was not for them, while others have decided to embrace the freedom to be fully distant and to move to another state or another country. But there are still much more that have fallen hard for the north of the state, and now that employers force more and more that workers return to the office, they do everything they can to stay. For many, it means getting closer to the city, or at least closer to a station.

Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty

When Paige Kendig, principal producer The late show with Stephen Colbert, Moved from Brooklyn to Chatham at the start of the pandemic, she knew, unlike Hasselbing, that the journey would be brutal and that he should finally return to the office. But she fell in love with the life of a small town. When the three-hour journey (four in poor traffic) turned out to be too much, she and her boyfriend moved south, buying a cabin in Staatsburg, a small town between Amtrak station in Rhinebeck and the Metro-North stops in Powhkeepsie. She is happy that they did not have to abandon some of their favorite things about life in the North. “It is very far away – we have a vegetable garden, a dog, we find trees – but it’s an hour and a half route long,” she said. (The only drawback, she told me, is that, it went so far south in the Hudson valley is a 40-minute player). Make a kind of adjustment to maintain the country’s idyll – get closer to the train, keeping an apartment in the city where they can spend a few nights a week, changing career, even by refusing promotions that would mean returning to the office every day. “I don’t know anyone who is still withdrawn full-time,” she says.

Jared Vengrin, a real estate agent at Corcoran, says he has had a lot of conversations in this vein with customers – people looking to move from places like Stone Ridge and agreement north of the Dutchess County. He too manages a motel In the red hook which served as a staging field for house hunters during the pandemic, and he observed first -hand that if some were blunt to buy a distance from turnipage, many buyers were tempted by houses that were much further, where they could obtain more for their money, especially in the days of fully distant working themes and the real market that followed, with buyers who have made a workforce struck the market. “Now, many sell,” he says. At the same time, “there are a lot of activities around any list in Hudson or Rhinebeck – places that have good proximity to Amtrak.” (The Rhinecliff station is, I was told, a crazy house during the week – “If you miss the first train, you are fucked up,” said a nave that a nave that people park from the Vengrin family, added a similar quarter – moving the northern red hook, which is more rural and further and further, the cooling and the back of the North Hame So that he can enter the city three days a week for his other job in a recruitment company.

Photo: House Anatole

Long journeys could be the largest factor, but some people have also left away and isolated places for cities and villages. Things that are attractive in a second house are not always what people want a place where they live full time. It turns out that many former New Yorkers really like cities accessible on foot where they can go to the corner of the street for a cup of coffee and meet other people, and they particularly like to have to drive long for basic necessities. MJ Collum, a real estate agent in Anatole House, a Upstate brokerage, said: “I saw a lot of people who bought in really remote regions to get closer to the community – sell their homes and move to a village.” This is what prompted Summer Wick’s recent decision to Kingston. In 2021, she moved with her husband and daughter from Portland, Oregon, in Tillson, a small hamlet 20 minutes from Kingston. They bought a 1939 farm and renovated it to a State worthy of a shelter. At first, it was not a huge affair that the house was somewhat isolated. But his daughter’s school is in Kingston, as is his swimming team. And on weekends, Wick should lead all around the Hudson valley to different markets to sell its candles. “The house was beautiful, but we were driving a ton,” she said. Thus, in August, they sold it and bought a place in Kingston instead. An additional advantage: Wick’s girl, a teenager, can move alone, as she prefers. But they had a lot of competition. Even now, when the market is less frantic, they found themselves in a war of tenders on the house they bought, a fixer of the 1900s.

After years to switch between a house in Kerhonksen and a place in the city, Alex Kahn and her husband took a similar step. They had closed their Kerhonkson house the week when the world closed, and what was supposed to be a weekend project while they lived in Brooklyn became their attachment base, while Brooklyn became the fun escapade where they kept a room in their old sharing on the part. “It was like the best of both worlds – I could go down and see people and go home and read by fire,” she said. It worked with a dog, but after having a baby, this kind of back and forth was no longer possible. They decided to stay in the North – she likes how calm is, having a house and a courtyard, and all the large restaurants and cafes that have opened from the pandemic. But Kerhonkson was just a little too far – it’s an hour to the Rhinecliff station – so they moved to Kingston, which is only 20 minutes from the train. Move there also meant that they could do shopping and do other activities without a long journey. Although his social circle is still largely in Brooklyn, Kahn does not intend to return.

However, shaving 45 minutes on a journey is an approximate compromise. Even the towns closest to the Hudson valley require hours on the train. A professional of communications with whom I spoke who moved during the pandemic to Rhinebeck, near the place where she grew up, says that she is able to move to the Upper West Side two or three days a week only because her husband is completely distant and takes care of the tasks for children, when she left 7 hours in the morning – a complete 1 p.m. And even a relatively minor change in the trains of trains can wreak havoc on carefully calibrated planning which makes long distance movements possible. Several people told me how rejected they were when Amtrak pushed the morning train to 6:36 until 6:09 am. Then there is the spectrum of a five -day offices return to the delicate balance that everyone strives to maintain. A woman I spoke with who moved to Rhinebeck in 2022 must currently be in her Yards Hudson office three days a week, but that goes up to five in May. She is optimistic as to making her work – she praised an underwater apartment of a friend, she has no children whom she must coordinate with her husband (although they have a dog), and she grew up to love certain things about the shuttle; She reads more books, for one. Even so, it admits, the entire arrangement is precarious. “I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to fall.”