TeamT2024

Hi All,

My employer have confirmed that they will sponsor me on an L1 Visa and so looking for advice on places to live within 20 minutes of Princeton, NJ please.

My husband and two young boys (aged 5 and 7) will also transfer with me and so places to live which are safe, family-orientated and have good public schools are important to us.

Rental budget would be around $3,000 - $4500 per month.

Can someone also advise how we should navigate the no credit history in USA dynamic for the rental property? Is it common for landlords to accept 3 - 6 months rent upfront in lieu of credit history?

I’ve currently got a UK registered AMEX so hoping given my history / relationship with them, they might give me a US registered card.

Thanks for your help.

porkedpie

Princeton itself is lovely. It depends on what kind of place you want to live in though - are you wanting forest or to be close to restaurants? House or apartment?
Places in Princeton proper might be a little out of that price range for a house but you might find a 3 bed apartment.
You won't want to live close to Trenton.
Almost all of NJ has pretty good schools by US standard.

Yes Amex should happily give you a US card, and it will take time to build up credit.
I don't think you'll have problems with getting approved for a rental though. Landlord might ask for an employee letter but in general it should be fine.

durham_lad

Although it was over 30 years when we moved to the USA with a company transfer then a letter from my employer was all I needed to rent a house. For credit cards back then I signed up with one of the very high interest cards that folks with bad or no credit can get. As long as it was paid in full every month then no charges and after a few months of paying off the card and paying the rent the credit score was good.

These days a Wise USD account can be opened from the UK and a USD debit card issued before the move over. This is what our daughter did in 2022 (a Wise GBP account) when she moved to England.

mandpete

Princeton is a fairly large place with a lovely downtown/university area. We moved here 22 years ago on L1 visa and live in north Lawrenceville on the border of Princeton. My husband’s company funded the rental of a 4 bedroom house for the first 12 months, back then it was $3500 per month. With the help of a realtor I looked at lots of houses in different towns within Mercer County. We realized we would probably be unable to afford to buy a decent house in Princeton or West Windsor and to avoid our children having to change schools we decided on Lawrenceville. Every town has good and not so good areas, even Princeton.

I can’t really comment on Amex but it was fairly easy to open a bank account.

Dan725

So long as you have good credit history with Amex, they will almost certainly issue you a card with a good size credit limit, which will help very much in establishing your US credit. Years ago I did it the other way (US-UK) as I wanted to ensure I maintained good credit history in UK while living in the US. Having the card with a fairly high limit but using it very little was a big part of keeping me on the UK credit radar (along with other little things like paying my dad's monthly BT bill), which paid dividends as I was easily able to obtain a mainstream UK mortgage recently. Only downside to Amex is that due to their high merchant fees it still isn't accepted everywhere (like in some smaller shops), even in the US, so you will need a Visa/Mastercard alongside.