I actually just came back from a week-long trip to NYC where I stayed with my cousin in Harrison (Westchester) and took Metro-North into and out of the city every day I was there. I had a lot of fun, but I would never ever want to actually commute like that day in and day out.

The train ride from Harrison to Grand Central alone is somewhere around 45 minutes. And unless you work right at Grand Central, you're looking at rushing to make connecting trains. Doing this for a week while exploring the city was fine, but the idea of having to do this every single day until I retire just to make a living would make me want to blow my brains out.

I don't know how my cousin does it. She works in the financial district and takes a 6am train into the city every day. When she gets home, she has just enough time to put her kids to bed before passing out. Now I understand why her husband has a WFH job.

And about that "great family home" thing... the housing stock is so old that every house, even the nice ones, is going to be a fixer-upper. Not long before I got there, they had a plumbing joint break in one of the upstairs bathrooms. Within a few minutes, it wrecked the fixtures in that bathroom, obliterated the ceiling of the kitchen it was above, and did a number on the kitchen counters.

I'm also generally not a fan of how the suburbs are laid out either. Houses are spaced so far apart that it feels like you're living in the country even though you're close to the city (I went trick-or-treating with their kids, and I had to force myself to not brag that my hauls when I was their age were twice as big as theirs because I got to visit twice as many houses in the same amount of time :), and the street layout is twisty nonsense where even the major roads only have two lanes.

No thank you.

I'll gladly visit NYC again (and I'm sad my trip was only one week and not two), but I never want to live there. I'm happy living in Dallas, though I'm considering a move to Las Vegas for political reasons. Either way, both of those are polar opposites of the NYC suburbs.

Agreed, being high income and living in Manhattan or nice parts of Brooklyn is great, but other than that, I find the quality of life to be much better in many other cities.

I feel like the suburbs in NJ within reasonable commuting distance (door to door in 45 min max reliably) offer all the drawbacks of the city with none of the benefits of the suburb. You get a little more space, but not enough. A little less traffic, but still a lot of traffic. No decent gyms or parks, unless you like paying out the nose. And super high and ever increasing taxes. And I think even a 45 min door to door commute is too much, but add on the system’s unreliable-ness, I would find it unacceptable to commute from Jersey.

I don’t know much about NJ. I lived in Westchester and it was great. Not sprawling exurbs by any means, but that’s a good thing. You can live in Rye or Pehlam and walk or bike to the Metro North station. MNR is very reliable, runs frequently at rush hour, and will get you downtown in 30-40 flat.

Yes, NJ Transit has to borrow Amtrak's tunnel and it frequently has problems, as does NJ Transit's stuff. MTA/NY infrastructure is much better, but still, I don't see how one can get from Rye or Pehlam to downtown in 40 min.

https://goo.gl/maps/DYvaWBSLFcP2 1h15m from Rye train station to Fulton subway station on a Tue morning

https://goo.gl/maps/TdQN5FhWF132 55m from Pelham station to Fulton subway.

So door to door, you're still looking at 70 min to 90 min commute one way, with the added stress of possibly dealing with train delays. I wouldn't be able to do that more than a couple years.

I don’t know why anyone would work near Fulton station. I worked in midtown and it was 34 minutes on the Metro North followed by a 5 minute walk.

I put Fulton since your comment stated it would take 30 to 40 min to get to downtown.

I meant midtown, which in Manhattan is the core business district.

There's a lot of hyperbole in here, especially about parks and gyms. There's plenty of parks all over NJ that offer different options from hiking, biking, to kayaking. Gyms are a plenty and it's weird to even say you'd pay more for them when places like Equinox or Chelsea Piers are absurd in price. And go ask any person commuting from Brooklyn right now how there commutes are going to get into Midtown Manhattan, they can be 30-45 minutes with current state of the MTA.

I know there are, but then the door to door commute is unacceptable per my standards. And the further from NY Penn Station you are, the more variance you are subject to, making commutes even longer.

My point is, if you want a door to door commute of sub 45 min, consistently, then you would need to be in Hoboken/Jersey City/Secaucus/Weehawken/etc. That whole Hudson County corridor doesn't offer much in the way of decent gyms (swimming pools, racquetball/squash courts, basketball, etc), and neither does it have any decent hiking. People don't really have yards there either.

If you move out of that circle, you do start getting some amenities, but your commute starts looking like 45 to 60+min, and you have to park your car at the train station or get dropped off, etc. It's all personal preference, but for me, I would want all the benefits of owning a car, or all the benefits of not needing to own a car. Living in NJ and working in NYC seems like compromising on both.

The question is: what is your point of comparison? What is the sub-million housing market look like within 45 minutes of SF, or DC for that matter?

I'm not familiar with DC, but SF is just as bad if not worse. My original goal was to point out that commuting from NJ isn't a reasonable commute, in my opinion.

Depends on where you are. I have a pretty great backyard and an excellent gym I pay $50/month for.