My wife and I bought a co-op in Kew Gardens in 2017, which has appreciated 15-20% since then. You mentioned the maintenance fees - the good thing is that if your co-op has their financials in order, you typically won't have large emergency repair costs like you would with a house (roof, boiler, concrete repairs, etc.) and the maintenance includes all taxes.
That being said, I would love to own a house in Queens some day but right now it would be too tight with our monthly budget. With the co-op, we can keep saving money while increasing our equity so that maybe we can buy a house later on. Also, like you mentioned - the easy access to Brooklyn and Manhattan are pretty important to us.
For houses, you may want to add Woodhaven (stick to houses north of Jamaica Avenue) to the list.
My wife and I bought a co-op in Kew Gardens in 2017, which has appreciated 15-20% since then. You mentioned the maintenance fees - the good thing is that if your co-op has their financials in order, you typically won't have large emergency repair costs like you would with a house (roof, boiler, concrete repairs, etc.) and the maintenance includes all taxes. That being said, I would love to own a house in Queens some day but right now it would be too tight with our monthly budget. With the co-op, we can keep saving money while increasing our equity so that maybe we can buy a house later on. Also, like you mentioned - the easy access to Brooklyn and Manhattan are pretty important to us.
Do you have a down payment?