Black Rock/St. Mary’s by the Sea in Bridgeport is great if you don’t need schools.

Anonymous wrote:Nobody moves to Connecticut. They only leave.

Connecticut has had the tightest real estate inventory in the country for years, so that is complete BS.

I grew up in Fairfield. Pretty great place to grow up! I miss Long Island Sound. It was nice to have easy access to NYC too. Great schools.

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in Avon and since the pandemic we have many NYers moving to Mom's neighborhood. Connecticut has access to LI Sound and the RI beaches. Much nicer and less stressful than DC. Most of the DC burbs are soulless and bland... I grew up in a suburb that was a fusion of Hartford suburb and Berkshire foothills...we had a ski area 15 minutes from our house. My Dad was a doctor in the town where ESPN is...he could fly fish on the way home from work. A lot of DC Citiots probably would not be able to cope if they were truly urbanites. Kind of like NYC folks who never left the urban environs.

Grew up in New Hartford and parents grew up in Litchfield. Litchfield especially has a strong “second home” NY’er culture that brings in a lot of culture and restaurants that punch way above their weight.

New Hartford is also great if you want rural suburban living - it has the Farmington River for world class fishing and a ski mountain (the stuff PP is referring to above). My parents recently had a few young families move in nearby who previously were living in CA / NYC, made a lot of $ via tech or business exits, and paid cash for their homes here to raise their kids.

I couldn’t do it (Arlington is as suburban as we can go!) but I do see the draw if you want more of an idyllic setting to raise kids.

I grew up in Avon and since the pandemic we have many NYers moving to Mom's neighborhood. Connecticut has access to LI Sound and the RI beaches. Much nicer and less stressful than DC. Most of the DC burbs are soulless and bland... I grew up in a suburb that was a fusion of Hartford suburb and Berkshire foothills...we had a ski area 15 minutes from our house. My Dad was a doctor in the town where ESPN is...he could fly fish on the way home from work. A lot of DC Citiots probably would not be able to cope if they were truly urbanites. Kind of like NYC folks who never left the urban environs.

Sounds like you might like parts of Litchfield County - look at New Milford, Washington, Litchfield, Woodbury. The interesting thing about Litchfield is it has both blue and very MAGA. It’s beautiful, quite rural, summers are much cooler than DMV but winter can be pretty brutal. Some celebrities live in Litchfield county full time or have a second home (Conan OBrien, Mia Farrow) to name a few.. so you do have a bunch of wealthy second home people looking for seclusion and privacy. Fairfield County may also offer some places you’re looking for.
Plenty of nature and hiking in this area although not very exciting otherwise. Some decent restaurants and a 2 hour drive from NYC.

Good friend from college moved out of CT pre-pandemic. She was born and raised in CT. She was upset about taxes and local government. Study shows more people moving out of CT than moving in.

https://patch.com/connecticut/wilton/more-people-left-moved-connecticut-2021

https://www.ctpost.com/news/slideshow/Report-CT-remains-one-of-top-states-for-outbound-215082.php

Suburb of NYC, New Haven, or somewhere else? Night and day differences.

Wealth, poverty, or exurbs. And all too damned cold with awfully maintained highways keeping you from getting anywhere fast or trains getting you there slow.

Which do you like?

CT is a beautiful state if you like the outdoors. There are plenty of strong conservative towns in eastern and western thirds, the center is more liberal in general. Yes it has a reputation for higher taxes but that also pays for some extraordinary services and well-maintained infrastructure and keeps the quiet, green areas as they are. It's not a state you can characterize in a sentence; if you like cool summers, check out the northwest mountains. If you're a water-loving person, the coastline has gazillions of boating options and there are major rivers like the Connecticut for freshwater--as someone mentioned, Haddam is gorgeous. If you like to hike, the parks are truly marvelous and there are small, cold ponds scattered all over the place. The people are not really anything like the popular concept, honestly if someone tells you that Connecticut is "waspy" all you've learned is that this person is a media idiot.

Anonymous wrote:My uncle sold his house in Bethesda and moved to Haddam, CT. He now owns a beautiful home overlooking the CT river with a pool for half the cost of the smaller Bestheda home he sold. It's rural, but not too far from Hartford or Wesleyan, so still some culture nearby. Winters are tough, so he recently bought a condo in FL.

I used to have family in Westport. Very different kind of community--super upscale and pretentious, more money.

I am from Westport. Wealthy but not entirely pretentious, imo

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nobody moves to Connecticut. They only leave.

You sure about that?

Plus 1. Great state! Grew up in Fairfield Cty, and here right now.

Check out towns like Milford or Guilford around New Haven. Charming and more down to earth and far less expensive than towns outside of NYC.

Real estate taxes are high. Real estate doesn’t appreciate that impressively outside of the Greenwich/Darien/Westport corridor. Schools are excellent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister lives there in Simsbury. I don't like the weather over there, bears walking on the streets and high property taxes. I myself would never move there.

What don't you like about the weather? Summer or winter? How does it compare to DC? I've heard taxes are very high but again depends on the county. I've also heard you don't get much for those high taxes either....

Temperatures are always lower and spring time seems to be about 3 weeks behind DC weather. Winters are brutal. In the summer, there were weird mosquitoes/flies biting our faces during the 4th July celebration, worse than in DC.

I loved living in CT, but it was many years ago. I lived in New Canaan, which is very wealthy. I rented a small house on a large estate, so I was one of the poors. It was a long walk to the train, but there is a train to NYC, and I went in a lot, even though I didn't work there. I could never afford to buy a house in New Canaan, Greenwich, Darien, etc. You have to move out of commuting distance to NYC to get a house that's moderately affordable. Property taxes are pretty high in CT.

Lots of CT is very rural and pretty. It's also somewhat poor. The NY suburbs raise the average income, but NE Ct is very insular and you can get a very nice, cheap antique house there for not a lot of $$, but there's nothing to do, and I, for one, would be miserable there.

Litchfield County, where I lived briefly, is beautiful. It would be a nice place to live if you had a remote job and wanted to go into NYC once a month or so. There are cute restaurants and stores, and lots of stuff to do, especially in the summer. But real estate is quite expensive there.

The shore is quite pretty too, and quite expensive, but as you go inland, the prices drop. Hartford is a gritty city, as is Waterbury, Danbury, New Milford, New Haven, Bridgeport, New London. Any largish metro area is rather run-down, at least they were the last few times I visited.

Are you moving there, OP? If you have lots of money, you'll be fine living on the coast or the NY suburbs. Otherwise, it's not the greatest state. Middletown is nice because of Wesleyan University. UConn is in Storrs, but I've never been there, so don't know the town. Yale doesn't really upgrade New Haven that much. There's loads of cuteness in the rural parts of the state, combined with provincialism.

It's cold in the winter.

I might move back there if I had to, but I wouldn't enjoy the winters. Otherwise, it's pleasant enough if you aren't too far from civilization.