(Photo: Alan Schein/Corbis)

The Suburbs
If nothing else, life in the cul-de-sac is a fairly secure investment these days. Though home prices foundered in the crash of the late eighties (when the number of homes for sale in Nassau County increased by one-fourth in a single year), suburbanites have less to fear this time around. Greenwich, the de facto hedge-fund capital of the world, is teeming with ladder-climbers in an industry that barely existed fifteen years ago. They work and spend locally, and benefit from a tax structure that encourages ever-larger McMansions. Geographic moves are helping New Jersey and Long Island, too. “There’s been a shift westward of the central business districts in midtown,” says MM&J appraiser Jeffrey Jackson. That’s increased the appeal of Penn Station over Grand Central, which in turn favors New Jersey Transit and LIRR commutes. And as Long Island has witnessed double-digit percentage increases every year for the past three, MM&J’s Jean-Pierre Blaise says suburban homes are secured by something immeasurable: emotional value. You’re unlikely to cut and run “if you’re buying your primary residence to raise your two-point-five kids,” says Blaise. (Mortgage data suggest that Long Island’s single-family homes turn over every seven years, compared with four to five years for condos and co-ops.) Perhaps most fascinating is the urbanization of the ’burbs, as young buyers mimic a Real World existence in Metro-North country. “The ‘city living’ trend—we’re now seeing it in White Plains, in Norwalk, even Yonkers,” says Jackson. “There’s loft-building conversions in New Rochelle. These areas that were kind of blighted are being reborn.”

Risk Factor: 3.5