- John Saverino moved from Long Island, New York, to Glendale, Arizona, in April 2022.
- After renting for a year, he bought a house for $204,000 — something he wasn't able to do back east.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with John Saverino, 48, about his experience living in Arizona after moving from Long Island, New York, in April 2022 with his boyfriend. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
A year ago, we decided to go to Arizona for vacation. We'd never really been in the Arizona area, just decided why not?
I absolutely fell in love with it.
We decided to leave east coast life behind and move west
We wanted to try something new, to take a chance and see what happens. We don't have any family out here, so that was kind of a risk, but it ended up working out.
I lived in Long Island, Nassau County — two miles from the beach. At that time I was living in my mom's condo.
I moved to Glendale, which is just outside of Phoenix. We're actually moving to Mesa, which is a much nicer area. It's a little less crowded and less congested.
We just purchased, but we were renting for the first year that we were out here. We were paying about $1,000 a month for a studio.
We bought a one-bedroom condo in a gated community. It's much more isolated than where we are now. After closing costs and everything, it was about $204,000.
We paid the HOA and then some of the taxes at my mom's condo, and one thing about New York is the HOA fees were outrageous. It was about $650 per month.
The HOA for the condo here is going to be $200 per month. Big difference.
The traffic in New York became unbearable
In New York, I was working in a warehouse position. I started at $13 per hour, then my wage went up to $15.50, but how can you survive on that? They're not paying enough to even make a living out there.
In Arizona, I work for a coal mining company, but I work in the office. I got a higher-paying job at $20 an hour and my boyfriend just got a $30,000 bonus, so things are looking good here.
One of the main reasons I left New York was because the traffic was getting out of hand. In Arizona, you have traffic during commuting hours, but that's really about it.
If I want to travel on that same road at 2 p.m. on a Saturday, it's smooth sailing — you can go anywhere you want and it's not bumper to bumper. In New York, it seems to be always like that.
My commute to work now actually ends up being about the same mileage as in New York, but sometimes the traffic is actually worse here.
In Long Island, the drive was more highway. Here, I take the freeway and then I get off and the one street I get off at has a lot of traffic lights.
And then, of course, New York has all the tolls, which definitely slows things up. And this state doesn't have tolls — but they make it up when you register your car because that's not cheap.
I thought car insurance was going to be cheaper out here. It's actually more expensive.
Registration was about $350 in New York versus $450 in Arizona.
I was thinking that it's not nearly as populated as New York, so I didn't expect the rates to be this high here. The drivers seem to be just as bad, if not a little worse, than New York drivers.
You can't beat the weather in Arizona — especially during the winter months
You're kind of centrally located. You're surrounded by California, Nevada, and Colorado. There's also a lot of mountains out here that are really beautiful.
One thing I like is that even though it gets hot, the dryer heat seems to be more bearable. And this climate is not like the other climates where you have a horrible winter where it's cold, or California which deals with earthquakes.
The average temperatures in the winter are in high 60s or low 70s — and that's perfect. While you deal with the heat, which nobody loves, I think it's the winter that makes it worth it.
Arizona is also starting to get more developed. I heard Phoenix 30 years ago there was hardly anything out there. It seems to be up-and-coming and economically thriving here. It's a great place to be.
Did you move to Arizona recently? Tell us some of your reasons for moving. Email reporter Jordan Pandy at jpandy@insider.com to share your story.