$649,000
31 Larkin Mill Lane, Beacon
3 bd · 2 ba · 1,620 sq ft · 0.2 ac
Moving from NYC
Moving up from the city
A lot of our clients arrive with a Brooklyn lease, a long list of towns and a vague idea that they'd like a porch. Marcus Oyelaran was one of them. Here's what he and the rest of us wish every city buyer knew on day one.
Decide how often you'll go back
Everything else follows from this. If you'll be in an office in Manhattan three days a week, you want to be close to a Metro-North station, which in our area means Beacon or Cold Spring (or the river towns south of them). If it's once a week or twice a month, Amtrak towns open up: Rhinebeck via Rhinecliff, and Hudson. If it's rarely, or you work for yourself, Kingston, New Paltz, the Catskill foothills and the farm towns of Ulster County give you a great deal more house for the money.
| Town | How you get to the city | Roughly, door to Midtown | Median sale price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold Spring | Metro-North, Hudson Line | About 70 minutes to Grand Central | $915,000 |
| Beacon | Metro-North, Hudson Line | About 80–95 minutes to Grand Central | $689,000 |
| Rhinebeck | Amtrak from Rhinecliff | About 1 hr 40 min to Penn Station | $1,050,000 |
| Hudson | Amtrak | About 2 hours to Penn Station | $735,000 |
| New Paltz | Bus, or drive to Metro-North at Poughkeepsie | About 1 hr 30 min to 2 hours | $565,000 |
| Kingston | Bus, or Amtrak at Rhinecliff | About 2 hours | $449,000 |
Times are typical and depend on the train you catch and how far you live from the station. Station parking in some towns has a waiting list for permits; ask us.
What actually changes
You'll need a car, probably two
Main Streets in Beacon, Cold Spring, Hudson and uptown Kingston are walkable, and you can live a good life on foot within a few blocks of them. Outside those few blocks, you drive: for groceries, school pickups, the hardware store, the dump. Budget for a car, its insurance and, in winter, snow tires.
No co-op board, but a tax bill
Nobody will interview you or ask for two years of reserves. Instead of a monthly maintenance charge, you'll pay property taxes, usually in two or three bills a year (town and county, then school). They are high. A $650,000 house in Dutchess County can easily carry $12,000 to $16,000 a year. Look at the actual tax bill for every house you're serious about.
The house is yours to fix
There is no super. You'll learn the name of a plumber, an electrician, a septic company, a chimney sweep and someone with a plow. We'll give you our list on closing day; it's one of the most useful things we hand over.
Water, septic and heat
In the city, water arrives and leaves without discussion. Here, many houses outside the village and city centers have a private well and a septic system, and some run on oil or propane rather than gas. None of this is bad, but all of it needs testing during the inspection: a flow test and water-quality test on the well, a septic inspection, and a look at the age of the tank and the boiler. Ask whether there's an old buried oil tank. Houses in Beacon, Cold Spring village, Kingston and Hudson are mostly on municipal water and sewer.
Broadband, still
Fast internet is now common in towns but patchy in the hills. If you work from home, we check the providers at the specific address before you make an offer, not after.
Winter and mud
Snow is moderate in the river towns and heavier up in the hills. A long driveway is lovely in June and a chore in February. March and April are mud season; the dirt roads in Marbletown and Stone Ridge get soft. A house that sits low near a creek may have a wet spring basement. We'll tell you.
How buying is different from the city
Some of it will feel familiar. Attorneys still run contracts and closings, as they do in the five boroughs, and an accepted offer still isn't a deal until the contract is signed. A few things differ.
- No board package. Houses close faster: 60 to 75 days is normal with a mortgage, sooner with cash.
- Inspection matters more. You're buying the roof, the foundation, the well and the septic, not a share in a building.
- The buyer agreement. Since August 2024, we'll ask you to sign a short buyer agreement before we tour. It sets out what we're paid, says it's negotiable, and limits us to that amount. Often the seller covers it. Read our buying guide for the full explanation.
- The mansion tax. The 1% tax on purchases of $1,000,000 and up applies everywhere in the state, not just in the city. In Rhinebeck and Cold Spring, plenty of houses cross that line.
- Selling your city place. If you're also selling an apartment, the city has its own transfer tax on top of the state's. Your city attorney will walk you through it; we can coordinate timing so you aren't carrying two homes for long.
Test-drive before you buy
Marcus's advice: spend a weekday in the town you're considering, not just a Saturday. Take the train at the time you'd actually take it. Buy groceries. Find the post office. Come back once in February. If you still like it, you'll like it.
If you'd rather rent for a year first, our rental desk in Kingston manages a dozen units and sometimes has something available. Plenty of our buyers rented first and bought the second year, often in a different town from the one they started with.
We came up looking at Hudson and bought in Beacon, because Marcus made us ride the train both ways on a Monday. Best advice we got.
— Buyers from Crown Heights, 31 Larkin Mill Lane area, 2024
A few of our listings near a train
$1,085,000
4 Tannery Bell Court, Cold Spring
3 bd · 2.5 ba · 2,050 sq ft · 0.3 ac
$689,000
Apt 2, 140 Prospect Lantern Street, Hudson
2 bd · 2 ba · 1,350 sq ft
Call Marcus
Marcus Oyelaran is an associate broker in our Beacon office and rented in Brooklyn for nine years before moving up. He runs most mornings on the rail trails and will tell you which towns he'd pick for which commute. (845) 555-0127, or use the form.