If you’re thinking about leaving the city for the ’burbs but can’t tell one town from the next, you are not alone.
Alison Bernstein, a New York mother of four, founded Suburban Jungle Realty Group, an advisory firm with offices in New York and Connecticut to help families navigate the move out of Gotham.
Bernstein, who has been in real estate for 15 years, has 1,200 active clients.
The business focuses exclusively on families who are leaving NYC for the suburbs or looking for a weekend escape; it searches in more than 500 towns in Westchester County, Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey.
She says she’s doing a few hundred deals a year. The business has grown 200 percent in the past 12 months as word has spread.
Bernstein says people tend to spend more time researching a pair of sneakers or a vacuum cleaner than they do a home purchase.
Her average buyer spends about $1.2 million.