Why do people move to Long Island? Family, schools, delis, vibes

For more than two decades, Justin and Christine Ripley called Chicago home. They met while attending Wheaton College in Illinois, Christine coming from her hometown of Smithtown, Justin from New Berlin, a Milwaukee suburb.

But last year, the couple, both 42, decided to make the move to Long Island.

"We were living in the city and dealing with city things like rats in the alley, and there was crime," said Justin, a partner at a large global executive search firm. "We have two daughters, and they were hitting prime school ages."

"And I missed the East Coast, I missed New York," added Christine, who stays at home raising their children. "I missed the food. The vibe of the people … you don't really understand that regionally people are different until you leave."

There’s no shortage of stories documenting New Yorkers’ relocation to other states and their supposed greener pastures. Between July 2022 and July 2023, New York State's population dropped by just over 101,000, according to Census data released in December.

The year before, New York saw a net loss of 244,000 people. That's because between 2021 and 2022, an estimated 545,598 people left New York for other states.

However, more than 300,000 people moved to the Empire State from other states in 2022, reported the U.S. Census Bureau. Long Island itself added 23,000 full-time taxpaying residents in 2020 and 2021, according to data released by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Whether they came for work, to be closer to family, for good schools or more space, families like the Ripleys share a commonality in leaving their homes hundreds or thousands of miles away to make new ones on Long Island.

Why Long Island?

I missed the food. The vibe of the people … you don't really understand that regionally people are different until you leave.

— Christine Ripley

"It’s coming down to lifestyle," said Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty agent Lowell Ackerman. While he has helped many clients sell their houses and leave Long Island, he also sees lots of people coming to the Island from other states.

"People want amenities; they want the hiking trails on the North Shore, the beaches on the South Shore, the proximity to the Hamptons or the North Fork," he said. "People are getting more than just a home — they’re getting an entire lifestyle experience with that."

While getting out of the city and back to the East Coast vibe were goals for the Ripleys, space was also a factor. Wanting more room than their Chicago duplex condo afforded them, they bought a 5,700-square-foot Mediterranean style house on a cul-de-sac in Greenlawn for $2.1 million so they could be close to Christine’s mother there and her sister in Smithtown. They sold their Chicago condo for $715,000.

They made an above-asking offer without actually stepping foot in the house, with their agent, Risa Ziegler, of Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Huntington, taking photos and giving Christine’s family a tour.

The couple had toured a dozen houses during a weeklong visit, putting in an above-asking offer that was rejected. When this house came up, they wanted to jump on it right away.

Justin took the lead on choosing the house, which Christine didn’t see in person until they moved in.

"I really wanted to come back, but Justin needed to be the one to be happy and comfortable" she said.

Douglas Elliman agents Phoebe Altman and Tamanna Jaggi both have had several clients who recently moved to Long Island from other parts of the country, including a young couple originally from Orange County, California, who moved with their baby from Paterson, New Jersey, to a home in South Merrick that Altman found them. They bought the newly renovated split ranch with four bedrooms and three bathrooms with less than 2,000 square feet for $815,000.

While Altman has had many clients sell their Long Island homes to move to Georgia, Florida, Texas and other places, "we still have so many people coming here to Long Island who want to raise a family."

Jaggi had clients buy a house in Franklin Square after living in Boston, with a brief layover in Queens, another relocate from New Jersey to Woodbury, and another from California to Upper Brookville.

Jaggi could only recall one person over the past few years selling their house to move to North Carolina for work.

Moving across the world

While the 2022 Census statistics on state-to-state migration don't include people who moved from outside the country, there are plenty of international new New Yorkers, including two families Jaggi worked with from the Philippines.

Vikram Machado is originally from India, but lived in Cebu in the Philippines for eight years while working in the insurance support industry, now at the executive level. Machado, 40, moved last year to Oyster Bay Cove, where he and his wife bought a modern house on 2 acres for $1.9 million.

The home has a lot of glass and 20-foot ceilings — "which will become a problem when you have to change a light bulb" — but he was quickly sold on it. "There's something about a vibe in a house, and it just gave us such a good vibe," Machado said.

He has family in the United States, including a sister in San Francisco, which weighed heavily in favor of moving to the West Coast. He spent several months there, as well as in Plainview. But he needed to be close to clients on the East Coast, and having good friends on Long Island sealed the deal.

"They were instrumental in making us feel at home," he said of "friends who turn into family."

He and his wife are also "not city people," with a love for the outdoors, that led them to their home in Oyster Bay Cove.

Machado has traveled to 35 countries — including the United States about 50 times — so he wasn't flying blind, but he also took a leap.

"You're afraid of breaking the inertia; you're comfortable — why rock the boat?"

He’s glad a friend told them to consider Long Island.

"Everything was so green and lovely, and a lot of the roads look the same and are quaint, and we got lost a lot," he laughed. "We've loved it. We've settled in."

While he's not homesick, he does miss some things about the Philippines, like "the clarity of the water and diving … it's tropical, it's lovely, you have beaches a stone's throw away."

I'm kind of loving it. It was definitely worth it I would say; all the efforts paid off.

— Sohit Saundh

Another client of Jaggi's, Sohit Saundh, 48, moved from Manila, in the Philippines, to Melville for work in 2022.

He also grew up in India, working in the Philippines for 15 years as a business executive.

"I was given the luxury to be anywhere in the U.S.; I wanted to be somewhere on the East Coast," he said. Friends in Boston and New Jersey spoke highly of their towns, but it was their friends on Long Island who won them over.

The combination of having friends nearby, wanting to live in a suburban setting, in a good school district, and finding a house they wanted that they could afford, made Melville the right place for them.

Placing their two daughters, Saira,19, and Shirin, 15, in a good school district was important to him and his wife, Shabina, an English language arts and social studies teacher at a Jewish day school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

"The school district was the best out of all I was looking at," he said, noting they first were looking to buy in the Jericho School District.

But they found the $1.3 million five-bedroom, three-bathroom, 3,000-square-foot high ranch they wanted in Melville and were happy to send their daughters to the Half Hollow Hills Central School District.

"We got both the things we were looking for," Saundh said.

While they do miss the warm, tropical climate of Manila, they mostly miss their longtime friends and network they built.

"It was our comfort zone because we lived there so long and our daughters grew up there," he said.

But he has quickly taken to Long Island.

"I'm kind of loving it," Saundh said. "It was definitely worth it I would say; all the efforts paid off."

Moving closer to family during the pandemic

Recent transplant Abu Hassan had an unusual long-term living arrangement that made a permanent move to Long Island inevitable, he said.

For the last decade, Hassan, 65, had been living in San Jose, California, and making frequent trips to East Meadow to see his physician wife. She traveled to California to spend holidays and vacations with her husband and their adult son.

The couple grew up in Bangladesh, moved to Canada for graduate school, then Portland, Oregon, settling in San Jose in 1999, where they raised their son. But an opportunity to do a medical residency in New York meant Hassan's wife would be on the East Coast while her college-aged son stayed in school in San Jose with his father.

"I wanted to support my wife; she really wanted to be a physician in this country," Hassan said. "In the end, it worked out really well."

We had been going back and forth for a very long time, and we knew as we got older, we couldn't have that lifestyle forever.

— Abu Hassan

Working in senior management in the high-tech industry in California gave him the flexibility to also work in New York.

But travel restrictions during the pandemic made the bicoastal living arrangement precarious, so the family decided to move their lives to New York full time in 2021.

They bought a six-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot Colonial brick house for over $2 million with a spacious yard with large trees and a pool in Upper Brookville, where they like "the village concept around us, the peaceful environment," Hassan said.

He misses the large social circle he had in San Jose, as well as interacting in person with his work team. But he's appreciating the benefits of his new life on the East Coast.

"We had been going back and forth for a very long time, and we knew as we got older, we couldn't have that lifestyle forever," he said. "COVID was almost like a silver lining; this was the catalyst for us to start living together again under the same roof. It's a unique situation for us, but we're very happy about it."

Coming back to Long Island

For Alexander Ovtcharenko, the decision to move back to Long Island last year came after a series of moves among Centereach, Indianapolis and Mobile, Alabama — and the ends of a few relationships.

Ovtcharenko, 43, lived in Centereach from the age of 15 until a year or two after graduating from Stony Brook University. He’s currently working as a cook, after jobs in the automotive repairs and parts industry, a stint as a Walmart security guard and a cook at a Waffle House.

He was born in the former Soviet Union, and lived there until he was 8 years old, moving first to Washington, D.C., then Manhattan, then the Bronx until his family settled in Centereach.

His move to Indianapolis in 2009 with his then-wife who had family there was the beginning of life in a new city.

"I loved Indiana. I loved the state. I loved the Midwest," he said.

Here I can go down to the bagel place and it'll be the same people who have been going here since I was a kid, and we can talk about everything.

— Alexander Ovtcharenko

A series of breakups and changing jobs sent him back to his parents' home in Centereach for a few years almost a decade ago. He returned in August to their home.

While it's not what he remembers when he was younger — "I only know one set of neighbors on the entire street," his church has changed, and his somewhat quiet street is now busier — he came back because his family is there.

"It is where part of my heart is. I still love whatever community we have left."

While at home, Ovtcharenko is saving money and waiting for the housing market to drop before he considers buying. He was aghast that the old Victorian house he bought for $30,000 in Indianapolis in 2010 — which needed a new HVAC system and cosmetic repairs — was recently listed for $400,000.

While he loved the Midwest, "where everyone is polite but not friendly," New York has a heartbeat that doesn't exist elsewhere he's been, he said.

"Here I can go down to the bagel place and it'll be the same people who have been going here since I was a kid, and we can talk about everything," Ovtcharenko said. "The local deli culture doesn't exist anywhere."