WILL THEY STAY?
They left New York for Connecticut during the pandemic. When it subsides ...
New York City dwellers fled to the safety of Connecticut’s countryside as the pandemic took a mighty toll, sending the home sales market in Litchfield County into the stratosphere and turning what for a century was a weekend getaway into a permanent address.
But now, as coronavirus vaccinations accelerate and restrictions start to ease, will the draw back to the excitement and accessibility of urban life be too strong to resist?
Jesse Liebman and his wife Kimiye bought a house in Roxbury in August, more than doubling the size of their Brooklyn apartment. They’ve settled in on 4 acres with their two daughters. The couple got a crash course in foundations, a beam versus a joist and calluses.
“We’re definitely staying next year,” Jesse Liebman said, in the backyard of the
“I don’t think ‘We’re close to New York’ is the value proposition for Connecticut. We are Connecticut, and I think we have some experiences that are ‘city-like’ and I think we’re going to have more and more of those, but we need to keep growing our cities and investing in our cities.”
— David Lehman, Connecticut’s economic development chief
couple’s 1790 Colonial recently — his daughters, Ruby 5, and Maxine, 3, climbing on logs cut from trees left leaning in a wind storm last year.
“Every day that goes by Kimiye becomes an eighth of a percent more certain that this is the place,” Jesse Liebman said, but the couple is keeping their options open.
In Litchfield County, the decision to put down roots or return to New York for transplants like the Liebmans could mark a turning point for a picturesque part of Connecticut that has nonetheless struggled with particularly steep population declines and few families with young children moving in.
The high stakes extend well beyond Litchfield County to the rest of Connecticut. For a decade or more, Connecticut has struggled to stabilize its population and grow its employment base.
In 2020, there was some good news despite the pain and suffering of the pandemic: The U.S. Postal Service recorded 16,500 relocations into the state based on change of address requests — most from New York — compared with more than 7,000 moves out in 2019.
The signs of long-term change are obvious. With offices closed and with the right broadband access, working in the Litchfield Hills has proved to be an easy and affordable transition for wealthy transplants. Private schools are reporting growing enrollment, and local businesses, from bookstores to contractors, say there’s a different feeling in the air.
“This is an area — the whole Northwest corner — is an area of declining population over the last 10 years, mostly through demographics, old age, retirement and people moving out, not a lot of young families moving in,” said George Verrastro, owner of the the Washington Food Market, a short drive from Roxbury. “So actually, this is an opportunity to stabilize the business community, stabilize the school system.
“The more people we have here during the year on a full-time basis, obviously, it will give us all more stability.”
‘A better proposition’
It is too soon to tell if the pandemic will permanently make Connecticut suburbs or rural regions more attractive. But certainly remote work could make living an hour and a half outside Manhattan more feasible, with fewer daily trips into the office.
Gov. Ned Lamont’s push for not raising taxes this year signals that Lamont wants to keep a lid on the budget and give residents — especially new ones — some measure of certainty, David Lehman, the state’s economic development chief, said.
“We are going to talk about who Connecticut is and what do we stand for when it comes to budget, to business, to education, and I think all of that is going to help people decide, ‘Do I want to go back? Am I really a city person? Or do I feel like this is a better proposition for me?’ “
Drawing comparisons with New York is not going to cut it, Lehman said.
“We’re never going to be New York,” Lehman said. “I don’t think ‘We’re close to New York’ is the value proposition for Connecticut. We are Connecticut, and I think we have some experiences that are ‘city-like’ and I think we’re going to have more and more of those, but we need to keep growing our cities and investing in our cities.”
The Liebmans say their jobs will become a key factor in their longterm plans for living in Connecticut. The commute to Brooklyn is about an hour and 15 minutes by car, a little longer, about 90 minutes to Manhattan.
Jesse Liebman owns a tutoring business in Manhattan and has been able to move from tutoring to managing tutors who work for him through Zoom. He hopes to bring his tutoring to students in Connecticut.
The road is tougher for Kimiye Liebman, an actress and professor of acting and movement at New York University and New York’s Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Kimiye Liebman has taped auditions and taught by Zoom.
“For me, it’s harder,” Kimiye Liebman said. “I would rather adjust my work to fit living here than try to fit going back and forth to New York. He has more faith than I do, but I’m trying to stay positive that I can find more local work.”
Signs of long-term commitment
Seven miles to the north of the Liebman’s house in neighboring Washington, First Selectman Jim Brinton watched his town of 3,500 increase by an estimated 200 to 300 full-time residents. The increase was a combination of part-time, weekend residents converting to full-time and others purchasing for the first time, he said.
“With all the changes, they don’t have to go back,” Brinton said, as Zoom has made it far less necessary to be in the office five days week. “They are very content to be here. So, it will be interesting when this thing is all cleared up, what happens. My sense is that they are going to stay.”
Across from town hall, at the Washington Supply Co., the local hardware store for nearly 130 years, co-owner and president Valerie Sedelnick said she is optimistic about newly-minted residents staying in town, but she also knows New York City will remain a part of their lives.
“We’re hoping that this will be their main place and then they will go into the city on the weekends,” Sedelnick said. “They are still going to crave the activity of the city.”
There are signs this spring that more transplants are thinking about staying longer term.
In a doorway off the lawn and garden department, there is a board with all the pending orders for outdoor furniture. There are easily three dozen orders tacked up there. The store does not usually have so many orders just as the spring season gets underway and half of them are from people new to town, said Dawn Belanger, a sales associate.
“It’s really unreal,” Belanger said. “What happened was when people arrived last year, and they realized that we were probably going to have to go through this for a while, they found contractors to do the patios, they found contractors to do the pools and now it all got done, they need the furniture, they need to chaise lounges, tables to sit at,” Morrison said.
On the other side of the checkout counter, Jay Combs, a store co-owner, observed: “There’s always a zig and a zag and a silver lining somewhere out there. It will shift back to New York during the week, but even then, the week in New York will be shortened. They will go down Tuesday, work Wednesday and come back Thursday afternoon.”
Combs said he expects at least 25% of the new residents will stay and maybe as much as 50%, given his conversations with customers at the store.
“It all depends on how long this keeps going,” Combs said. “The longer they are here, the more entrenched they are going to get.”
At the Hickory Stick Bookshop, owner Fran Keilty said further improvements in broadband service in the area will not only make working remotely more attractive but be beneficial to local school systems.
“The more that’s improved, the more this becomes an attractive place,” Keilty said. “It’s a very attractive place, but to live here, you have to be able to work here. If that’s possible, what’s not to like?”
As she worked among the bookshelves, store clerk Alana Corwin said she relocated with her partner from Brooklyn’s Crown Heights early in the pandemic and moved in with her partner’s parents in New Milford. She remotely completed her master’s degree last spring at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and was hired as a virtual teaching assistant.
Corwin said she also can pursue her career in animation and graphic novels remotely. She and her partner are now looking to rent an apartment.
“I have really come to love the hiking and the getting back to nature, that kind of experience,” Corwin said. “And getting away from that fast-paced city life.”
A place to raise kids
The onset of the pandemic a year ago sent some New Yorkers to take up residence in weekend homes in Litchfield County, with others scrambling to find rentals. The demand for rental properties swiftly turned into a surge in house purchases, including owners of weekend places now needing something bigger, local real estate agents said.
Sale prices soared, with rare multiple bids becoming the norm as the number of properties for sale dwindled. According to the Warren Group, seven of the top 10 towns with the biggest percentage increase in median sale price in 2020 were located in Litchfield County.
With the spring home buying season in full swing, there is little sign of a slowdown, Steve Pener, a real estate agent at William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty in Kent, said.
“I’m just trying to keep my head above water,” Pener said, in a recent interview. “I’ve had two listings, both modestly priced. Each of them received about 30 showings in the three days they were up. About six offers a piece.”
The ramped-up demand flowed into the area’s private schools, including Washington Montessori School in New Preston and Rumsey Hall in Washington.
Enrollment in kindergarten through fifth grade at Rumsey Hall was 100 last spring, compared to about 80 in a typical year. For the first time in the school’s history, which dates to 1900, there is a waiting list for each of the grades, according to Ben Tuff, director of admissions.
Tuff said just four of about 25 families who were transplants are going back to New York.
“The majority of the families that I talked to are at companies that are more inclined to allow them to work from home one or two days a week so they can zip into the city Monday through Wednesday,” Tuff said. “The majority of the families here downsized in New York, got rid of the apartments and made a more permanent home up here.
“I think they’ve realized what a healthy place this is to raise your children compared with Manhattan.”
A new community
In Roxbury, Kimiye Liebman said her daughters have adjusted to life in the country.
“I ask them if they miss their friends,” Kimiye Liebman said. “I think they miss certain friends. They are living their best life as far as I can tell. They really just go with the flow. I would hate to rip them away from New York in their teens.”
The Liebmans invested months in search of a new home outside of Brooklyn. They fell in love with a house in the Hudson Valley in May, but the owners took it off the market. Kimiye Liebman then found the house in Roxbury, but her husband wasn’t too enthusiastic about it until he saw the new, standing seam metal roof, bathrooms and room in the attic for an office and playroom.
The couple won a bidding war, agreeing to a price of $775,000. They moved into the 2,500-squarefoot house in August, more than double the size of their New York apartment. For now, they are renting out the apartment in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.
Jesse Liebman said he does miss what he describes as the “simplicity” of living in New York.
“You leave your door and walk and you just stroll and you go,” Jesse Liebman said. “You have your unlimited metro card and you hop on the subway and you go there and then you hop and go there. I’m just not used to being in a car all the time.”
But he sees the advantages of the house: separate rooms for his daughters and potential for an office in the attic replacing a bookshelf in the couple’s bedroom in Brooklyn.
“To go back to having the same space, we’d all be just sitting on top of each other,” Jesse Liebman said.
Jesse Liebman said Roxbury started to feel like home very quickly. Their neighbors reached out, one of them allowing the family to sled down their hill this past winter. Soon, horses will be peeking over a fence on that same hill.
The couple has met an increasing number of New York families who have also relocated — “transplants like us and great local people,” Jesse Liebman said. “We feel we’ve found a whole community. It’s not just a pandemic thing.”