Hot Town, Summer in the City

“It’s a bit too quiet,” she said as we left the building and took a right onto West 11th Street. 

She had a fear of being mugged. Some trauma from years ago.

“Well, it is July. Most people are gone.”

“Where?”

“…The Hamptons?”

She looked at me. “You mean eight million people are in the Hamptons?”

I immediately realized how ridiculous that sounded.

And it got me thinking: Why is New York so much quieter in the summer? Where does everybody go? Of course eight million people aren’t in the Hamptons. They’re also in Nantucket, the South of France, Connecticut, Maine, Europe, or just hiding somewhere with a pool and air conditioning.

I know that may sound a bit out of touch. But that’s New York real estate, baby!

Summer in New York is either your favorite time of year or Dante’s unpublished 10th circle of hell. There is no in between.

For the detractors, it’s hot, sticky, and smells of body odor and hot garbage (the subways at least). Everyone seems a little more irritable, a lot less patient, and much closer to becoming the stereotypical New Yorker you see in movies yelling at strangers. (I’m convinced the rest of the world thinks New Yorkers exist in a perpetual July heat wave.)

The people who love it gush about being able to walk into restaurants that would normally require reservations months in advance. Strolling down nearly empty streets hand in hand with an ice cream cone. The camaraderie among the people who stayed while everyone else fled.

I can argue both sides. But, as someone who genuinely loves New York, there’s nothing I enjoy more than leaving it every now and then. Because, then, I get to return to it.

Within a few hours, you can be hiking in the Catskills, sitting on a beach in the Hamptons, antiquing in Connecticut, sailing in Maine, golfing in New Jersey, skiing in Vermont, or boarding a direct flight to almost anywhere on the planet.

New York is really an access point to the world.

I once had a buyer whose exit strategy was a very important part of his criteria. After every showing, he would pull out his phone and ask how long it would take to get somewhere else. LaGuardia. JFK. Penn Station. Metro-North. The Holland Tunnel.

At one point, I even picked him up at the Blade helipad on 23rd Street so we could test the route from a prospective apartment. Then we went across to the West Side and tested another one.

He was onto something: An important part of choosing where to live in New York is often how you plan to get out of it. I once had a seller in Tribeca with a weekend house in Litchfield County, Conn. Her reason for selling? She wanted to move to the Upper West Side, where she’d shave nearly 30 minutes off the drive to her country house.

I’ve had buyers choose the West Side because they spend every weekend at the Jersey Shore. Hamptons and North Fork people gravitate toward the East Side to be closer to the Midtown Tunnel. One of the biggest selling points of a building I represented on Central Park North was that you could be at LaGuardia in about 17 minutes.

Those aren’t details you’ll find in a floor plan or an offering plan. But they influence buying decisions every day. New York is easier to love when you know you don’t have to be here all the time. You can come and go as you please, and you never feel stuck.

Because even the most die-hard New Yorkers get that feeling sometimes. The city overwhelms you. The ongoing construction, the traffic, the smells. The endless motion of it all. You find yourself browsing Zillow, dreaming about a farmhouse where your dogs can run free or a cabin on a lake somewhere.

You need to get out of Dodge. And you can. But there is a difference between visiting New York and returning to it. When the skyscrapers, bridges, bright lights and endless hum of activity are yours, they start to feel like a porch light left on for you.

Every New Yorker knows the feeling: That first glimpse of the skyline after you’ve been away. For a moment, the noise, the crowds and the traffic are forgotten. You’re just happy to be home.

Maybe that’s why so many of us leave every summer. Because one of the best things about living in this city is getting to come home to it.

Mike Fabbri is a residential real estate agent and founder of the Mike Fabbri Team at The Agency.