First decision, do you want to live in Nassau County or Suffolk County? Each has its own advantages. Nassau County is closer to the city, so if you commute to Manhattan for work, you should take that into consideration.   Each town has both incorporated and unincorporated areas.  Nassau County is made up of three towns: Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay. There are also two cities in Nassau County: Glen Cove and Long Beach.  Suffolk is similar in a lot of ways to Nassau County, as you head east, things begin to change. It becomes less congested, although it is more so than it was only several years ago. As you go further out, it begins to get more rural.   Suffolk County includes ten towns: Babylon, Brookhaven, East Hampton, Huntington, Islip, Riverhead, Shelter Island, Smithtown, Southampton, and Southold.

Next decision, do you want to live on the North Shore versus living on the South Shore.  Each has unique characteristics, take a ride along both to see the differences.

You also need to figure out the type of community in which you want to live. If you know people living in different towns, talk to them. Communities, even those adjacent to each other, have different personalities. In some towns, you’ll find that everyone knows everyone else. In others, you’ll find that people barely say hello to their neighbors.

The counties of Nassau and Suffolk have long been renowned for their affluence. With median home prices rising in excess of $400,000, Long Island has a very high cost of living with residents paying some of the highest property taxes in the country. Such affluence is especially pervasive among the hamlets and villages on the North Shore of Long Island also known as the ‘Gold Coast’ and among opulent pockets of the South Shore.

Long Island is home to some of the most expensive houses in the country. In fact, the most expensive residence in the country is Three Ponds in Bridgehampton.  Long Island is home to the luxury communities of the Hamptons, as well as Cold Spring Harbor and Lloyd Harbor in Suffolk County and Garden City, Laurel Hollow, Syosset, and Manhasset in Nassau County. Long Island is also home to the second largest private residence in the country, the Otto Kahn estate. Otto Kahn was a famous Long Islander who built the second largest private home in the United States, in the style of a French Chateau.