St Thomas vs St john

Wow, St. John and St. Thomas are like night and day!

St. John is quiet and St. Thomas is bustling.

I'm sure everyone here will encourage you to take a "pre move visit" (We need to shorten that into a PMV. :p)

St. John will also be considerably more expensive to live on. In fact, many people live in St. Thomas and ferry to St. John jobs.

That being said, I love St. John and if I had my druthers, I'd live there as opposed to any other island. (or anywhere else in the world for that matter!)

Good luck, keep us posted!

I've heard that many people live on St Thomas and work on St John and just take the ferry . I won't be able to do the pre--move visit (PMV) What about coming down for a month or two to "test the waters) ? Are there short term rentals that aren't astronomical in price? There was one that I heard about on St Thomas that you can rent a room monthly for $650 or so. Also I assume many are furnished?

The month or two test is more than enough! Most folks only need a week or 2 to get things in order.

There are short-term rentals like you described and they are furnished.

Keep it close to Red Hook for the St. John ferry and you should get more than a great idea of what things are like in 2 months on both islands.

At first, we definitely wanted to be on St John and turned up our noses at STT - before we even made a PMV (thanks Rich!). Just talking to friends and family who have been, it just sounded like STJ would be the best place to be. So we started to do our research and quickly realized there was no way we could afford STJ! We would have to ferry over to STT to get necessities and probably could only afford a small apartment (we were looking to buy, not rent). We love the beauty and peacefulness of STJ, but honestly, after awhile, it would get to me. I'm kind of a city girl at heart and I'm excited to be on STT and have some hustle and bustle. If I want the relaxation of STJ, I'll take a ferry over. But it was just too expensive and too much of a hassle to make it our permanent home. We got a great deal on a home on the quiet side of STT, we couldn't be happier. That's another thing - if you want it to be less hustle and bustle, look to settle around Red Hood or the side opposite of Charolotte Amalie. It's very peaceful and quiet. Good luck!

It seems that everyone who feels the urge to move to the USVI focuses on moving to St. John, and who wouldn't? 2/3 of the island are protected beaches and beautiful forests, and there are charming little towns. It really is a lovely dream, and one that we fell deeply into when the urge to go island found us.

But as folks like us who do their research find out, dreams sometimes must remain dreams. 2/3 of the island is off limits for building, so land is a premium resource. The finite amount of available property drives prices ever higher as demand increases, and that's only likely to get worse. Most large lots have been cut down to smaller parcels, which because of demand are incredibly expensive and out of the reach of a lot of people.(including us).

The charming little town that looks so lovely as vacationers becomes a very limited number of stores in which to shop. Selection of products is more limited than on other islands, and prices higher. You will likely have to take the ferry to and from St. Thomas to get things you need, adding even more expense to the cost of consumer goods.

The economy is based on tourism, so most jobs will fall in the service and hospitality industries. Even though the cost of living is higher than in many areas of the lower 48 states, wages are lower. And many of those jobs are seasonal.

Medical services are also limited, so anyone needing specialty care wuold have to go to St. Thomas.

There are only 5000 residents on the island, so it would be like to moving to a very small town that gets invaded by tourists for 5 months out of every year. Everyone knows everybody else (or is only 1 degree of separation away), so word about what 's going on can get around pretty quickly. (The residents of Kauai call it the coconut network).)

All of these realities added up for us to a move to St. Croix. We brought a job with us (at the rate of pay I earned in DC) and bought a house (meaning we didn't need to pay first and last months rent plus a deposit in order to rent a place), but still needed at least $10k extra just to cover the costs of getting settled, including buying furniture (we'll admit we did buy quality furntiure that was on the higher end of prices we say here), paying the various taxes and deposits needed to get our utilties and care going, and to buy other items we never needed before, like a generator, a lawnmower, and other items related to hurrican preparedness and home maintenance.

Based our our experiences, I wouldn't dream of moving to St. John without bringing at least $15k in savings with me.

Sorry if this comes off as negative -- it isn't meant to be anything more than our assesssment of the realities of making a home on St. John. While everyone has different tastes and needs in terms of being comfortable, I hope that you'll give thye issues raised here serious consideration, especially if you really are planning to move without spending time down here first.

I wish you nothing but the best in pursuing your dreams....

HC

do you know what the names of some of the short-term rental places are? i am moving down in about a month and will need to find a place asao also a job....i am currently a teacher in NJ but am will to work doing anything to pay the rent and get off the ground!

This message board is awesome. I just wanted to thank everyone that responded with all the great information! One more question (sorry!) What are some of the short term rentals that are furnished that I could contact? Does anyone know of some? Take care and I hope that my house sells quickly so I can be on the move! Oh yea, Also - I sell advertising for a business newspaper in Little Rock. Are there companies that hire for advertising sales on St Thomas?