Saturday, April 10, 2010

Houses are half in, half out

From the Daily News:

The Brown family lives in a house divided: When they walk inside, a left turn puts them in Queens - and a right in Long Island.

The border between city and suburb bisects their 1,500-square-foot Colonial-style home, giving the Browns the best of both worlds along with twin addresses: 247-27 137th Ave. in Rosedale, Queens; and 103 Gold St. in Valley Stream, L.I.

"The kids sleep in Queens," says mom Myrna Brown. "And we sleep in Long Island."

Brown, husband Lawrence and their eight kids are among 84 homeowners living in Splitsville, with one foot in New York City and the other in Nassau County.

The residents in this strange parallel land straddle Rosedale and Valley Stream, Little Neck and Great Neck, and Floral Park and New Hyde Park.

Along with two addresses, the "suburb slickers" often share two school districts - and the chance to shop for cheaper utilities, cable rates and car insurance based on their home field's advantage.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

There numerous instances of properties straddling two counties, townships and villages. I am not sure in this owners case who gets their real estate taxes. Naussau County is obviously much higher than Queens - who decides this? They do have a nice attractive, tudor style home.

Babs said...

GORGEOUS home!

Ridgewood Mike said...

It is a nice house. But the tax/services situation sounds like a nightmare to me. Too easy for municipal officials to pass the buck. I wonder if they have to pay NYC income tax.

georgetheatheist said...

They need to fix their sidewalk before someone trips and sues them. Mineola or Jamaica?

Anonymous said...

Taxe are split the portion of their property that shows on the NYC tax Map for Queens gets assessed to NYC and the portion of the property that lies in Nassau is assessed by Nassau

Helen said...

Noticed that the Brown family has eight children but only seven appear in the picture. The missing one's probably a teenager. God Bless them all!

Nice neighborhood is close enough to Belmont to hear the race track announcer and to pick raspberries and blueberries along their side of the Cross Island Parkway. They probably don't even see a snowplow in the winter.

Anonymous said...

seems like there's taxation without representation going on here.

Anony2 said...

Sounds like a headache, I used to work for a major insurance agency and the people in this situation were charged the much higher auto rates for Queens and the much higher home insurance rates for Nassau. We always fought for them, but not everyone has such a nice agent :)