Leslie Day’s place has got a great Manhattan waterfront view. She pays about one-third the cost of nearby apartments and gets around three times the space.
The reason? Day’s place isn’t just on the water, it’s in the water. Day lives on a houseboat in theWest 79th StreetBoat Basin. Home is a 57-foot boat with two bedrooms and two decks, which she shares with her husband, three cats and a cockatoo.
Part of a “live-aboard” community that numbers roughly 35, and includes houseboats, sailboats, cruisers, an old Maine Ferryboat and a couple of floating homes, Day knows a great real estate deal when she sees it.
Her dockage fees, $152 per linear foot, or $8,664 in annual rent, are, compared to living in an apartment in the city, a supreme bargain.
It’s also a scenic place to live. Day’s home is a tableau of serenity, with wild flowering plants adorning her deck. A kitten lies balled up nearby. Families motor by in sailboats heading off down theHudson River, waving hello.
“This is a tight-knit community,” says Day, the boat basin’s unofficial historian, as she unloads groceries purchased just up the road on Broadway. “People grow old and die here.”
The only other marina inNew Yorkthat welcomes houseboats is Venice Marina inBrooklyn, which has around 30 boats docked. There are also likely a couple of hundred transients who make sailboats their year-round home, with live-aboards allowed at Liberty Landing Marina inJersey City, just across the water from downtownManhattan.
Houseboat owners pay no real estate taxes. But live-aboards have to worry about things that land-lovers don’t changing their oil, or the fact that their home might sink in bad weather. Day also must spend several thousand dollars a year in maintenance, insurance and mortgage expenses for an asset that, at best, can maintain its value, but will most likely depreciate over time. Unlike an apartment dweller, she can’t go running to the super.
“There’s no super. There’s no maintenance guy. You’re the maintenance guy,” said Day, who works as a science teacher in one ofNew York City’s private schools.
To prepare for bad weather, residents change the oil in the boat engines and add antifreeze. They insulate windows with plastic, break up iced walkways and shovel snow.
Yet things can go drastically wrong, as in December 1992, when a Nor’easter sank several boats and Day and her husband spent three days and nights up to their knees in water. “It’s tough work,” says Day, “and it’s no longer such a great deal.”
Rick Lowe, vice president of operations for Florida-based Eboatloans.com, a nationwide lender that frequently extends credit to the live-aboard community, said one can reap considerable savings by living in a houseboat.
The greatest advantage is in high rent markets such asNew YorkandSan Franciscowhere Lowe says you can get three times the space for about a third of the cost.
Houseboat owners receive the same tax-write-off advantages as real property owners, adds Lowe, although some states tax houseboats as real property while others merely treat it as a recreational purchase and only look to collect a one-time sales tax charge.
However, live-aboards need to have impeccable credit to receive mortgage financing because of higher perceived risk, adds Lowe, whereas a real property owner can have sub par credit.
Mainly it’s adventure and nature’s proximity, not economic considerations, that draw most live-aboards to the water.
Linda Ridihalgh, editor of LiveAboard Magazine, estimates there are roughly 30,000 live-aboards in North American waters.
She said being a live-aboard is not necessarily a less inexpensive way to live.
“It’s possible [to lower one’s overhead] but it’s all in how you want to live,” she says. “I know people who live each month on what some live-aboards spend on their cell phones. It’s all a matter of lifestyle, just as it is on land. It’s not cheaper. It’s a different way of life.”
New houseboats can run anywhere from $30,000 to $1 million, depending on what one is looking for.
One can also buy and reside upon used 30-foot sailboats for as cheap as $10,000, and become a “transient” folks who live on boats with V-shaped hulls that are more mobile than houseboats and are less permanent fixtures in marinas. Such live-aboards far outnumber houseboat owners.
Those living on houseboats come from a variety of backgrounds, and even include former real estate agents.
David Blacklock, a former broker with Douglas Elliman, has been living as a transient at theWest 79th StreetBoat Basin for the past three years during the summer months.
He notes the difference between his former life on land, and his current one on the water.
“You’ve got to realize that a boat is not an apartment,” says Blacklock. “You have to be very disciplined because it’s a small space. You have to realize that the winter months can be cruel.”
Oddly enough, Blacklock likens a live-aboard’s oneness with nature to that of a real estate broker’s experience with the ever-changingManhattanreal estate market.
“Buildings go up, get converted and torn down. You get insight and knowledge of the city as an organic thing,” he says.
Despite the attraction of houseboats for some, live-aboards have few, if any, rights because they are essentially parking their boats along the shore.
Blacklock says that oftentimes live-aboards find themselves beholden to marina managers and municipalities whose economic and political interests don’t include them.
“They don’t want people getting established, getting territorial, getting some kind of proprietary feeling about ‘this is my spot, this is where I live,'” says Blacklock.
“If they can get someone in there with a 45-foot super yacht or a 60-foot motor yacht paying $6,000 for the summer, they’re much happier.”
Albert Levi, managing director of Venice Marina in Brooklyn says houseboats require additional electrical support and sanitation devices and that therefore many marinas simply can’t accommodate houseboats and don’t want to expend additional monies to do so.
Consequently, live-aboards say fewer and fewer marinas are granting them year-round permits.
The live-aboards at theWest 79th StreetBoat Basin maintain their year-round status only because they staked claims prior to 1997, when the city curtailed year-round dockage to the months of April through October.
Day believes the days of finding a bargain and some nice scenery at theWest 79th StreetBoat Basin may soon be over. She thinks the city may dishonor the contract’s grandfather clause and will evict them when it sees fit.
“We’re doctors, lawyers, teachers a cross-section of the city and we give back; we’re very active and involved. It’s awful what they’re doing,” says Day, who’s lived at the basin nearly 30 years. “They like to portray us as squatters, but this is a real community.”