I Ditched My NYC Apartment for a Boat

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As New York becomes ever more expensive, canny residents are looking for every possible way to beat rent costs. One little-known path is to forgo land altogether for a life on the water.

NYC has long had houseboat communities, although they are traditionally few and far between. Indeed, as real-estate costs rise, they’re getting even more scarce.

Like rentals, condos and co-ops, prices for slips—boat parking spaces connected to a dock in a marina—are also going up. The good news, however, is that they are still priced significantly lower than most rents.

Marine life can be a terrific adventure, filled with unusual challenges and unique rewards. “Expect high highs and low lows,” says Will Haduch, 26, who has lived on his Pacemaker yacht in Jersey City, NJ, since 2014. (New Yorkers’ boats vary in size and shape—a far cry from the uniformly boxy vessels moored in cities like Seattle or Amsterdam.) Haduch originally came to NYC for a construction job when he saw the boat for sale. “I just kind of dove in,” he quips.

The marina charges $700 per month—a steal compared to area rents, which average $2,400 for a one-bedroom, according to Rent Jungle. “The best part is the view” of the lower Manhattan skyline, Haduch says. “Anyone else who wants this [from an apartment] has to spend four times what I do.” His Jersey City docking spot has water spigots and electrical hookups, and there’s a clubhouse with bathrooms, showers and a sundries shop. Boaters can get mail there, and even Seamless deliveries.

Nautical living suits Haduch. Earlier this year, he quit his job to be a contestant on “The Bachelorette”; afterward, rather than return to construction, he began working as a deckhand for a neighbor on the marina. Since then, the rookie has even rebuilt one of his boat’s engines from scratch. Beyond technical skills, he’s also found a great community. “In the city, you rarely know your neighbors,” he says. “But whenever I walk down the dock, I have four parties to choose from.”

Marina life is also a ball for Kristina Marino. The 32-year-old—who works in marketing and has her own jewelry line—is spending the summer on a 1967 Euroline craft at a small marina in Jamaica Bay, Queens. It’s quite a change of pace from the Williamsburg apartment where she’ll return in the winter. “The marina is so social,” she says. “Everyone knows everyone. It’s like a college dorm.”

Marino’s boat was in rough shape when she began living on it, and she spent days cleaning and painting every inch of the interior. “I’m not handy at all; I can’t even put together Ikea furniture,” she says. “I felt so accomplished when this was done.”

She finds sea life fun, if slightly rugged: The boat has no toilet or Internet, and cellphone reception is spotty. As with many small watercrafts, her bed is in the V-berth—the pointed front of the boat—so it’s challenging to find sheets that fit. She has no running water, but she attached a hose to the marina’s spigot and hung a milk crate over the side of the boat for a makeshift sink. “It’s essentially glamping,” she says.

Living on the water can be even more rugged in marinas that have both docks and moorings: boat parking spaces unattached to land. Pavel Kocourek, a 30-year-old Ph.D. student in economics at NYU, lives that way in South Brooklyn, on a sailboat he bought in 2013 for $3,500 in cash—sight unseen.

Having grown up in the Czech Republic, Kocourek had never even been on a boat before.

“The boat was better than I expected,” says Kocourek, who shares the boat with girlfriend Adva Yemini when she’s in town from Israel. “Actually, I had no expectations. I didn’t even know the difference between a sailboat and not a sailboat!” He quickly grew to love boating life and now owns three vessels, renting two on Airbnb to supplement his academic income. He rarely gets tourists aboard; the guests are almost all New Yorkers seeking a little relief from the city. “It’s perfect for that,” Kocourek says. “It’s so beautiful and peaceful here.”

Kocourek’s no-frills mooring costs about $300 per month. He survives without electricity or running water, but the bathroom has presented problems. The first time he tried to empty the toilet tank, it exploded all over him. “After that, I decided: ‘No toilet!’” he recalls. He’ll often jump into the water to do his business, or go to a nearby church, where he usually sees other marina folks there for the same reason.

Enjoying boating life often comes down to mitigating discomfort—particularly in the winter. “If you’re a pantywaist, you’ll never make it,” says Denise de la Cerda, 54, a tattoo artist and painter. “But that keeps out the riffraff.” She bought her 1971 Ericson, the fiberglass sloop where she lives with her dog Tashi, in 2013. Returning to Jersey City after a stint in São Paulo, she found that rents had skyrocketed, but she wanted to stay in the area.

De la Cerda loves being in nature. “We get ducks, swans, geese—they eat out of your hand,” she says. She’s fine without too many creature comforts, cooking on a Coleman stove and using an oil heater for warmth. She isn’t shaken by storms: “It’s wind, it’s noise—so what? This little boat is built like a tank.” Her Jersey City berth is also within bike-commuting distance to her art studio in Hoboken and the tattoo shop in Williamsburg where she does commissions.

If boat life is calling you, now’s the time to pursue it. “It’s best to buy at the end of summer, when people are thinking about how inconvenient winter will be,” de la Cerda says.

Dave Thorsten, 58, who runs northern Queens’ College Point Marina and has lived on his own boat for 12 years, recommends starting with a Sundancer, which offers high levels of insulation at a relatively reasonable price—that added warmth means you can live on one year-round. “That’s basically a barge with no engine and a house on top,” he says. Used Sundancers sell for as little as $7,000, while newer models may fetch as high as $1 million, depending on their age and upkeep.

While slip fees around NYC come relatively cheap, there are plenty of extra costs. Stock up on DampRid to trap excess moisture, Tilex for mildew, a canvas cover for winter, and homey accessories. And you’ll be paying to haul it out of the water twice a year for inspections.

Living on a boat seems almost anachronistic in today’s New York. But for the committed few, spending days fraternizing with fishermen and nights rocking gently to sleep are well worth having to pee in a bucket or sleep under a giant pile of blankets.

As de la Cerda says, “If you really love being on the water, you’ll make it work.”

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