Advice on moving to New York from UK....urgent help needed!

Although many people live on the New Jersey side of NYC (like Hoboken), the problem I have with it is accessibility and extra costs in commuting. Any and all connections across the Hudson River are not part of the NYC system, so you would pay one fare just to enter (or leave) NYC, and then pay additionally to get to the rest of the city. Also, when Hurricane Sandy hit, it knocked out all of the PATH train service for a full week before skeleton service was restored, and it was over two months until service was restored to the level it was before the storm. That's not to say that this will happen again anytime soon, but if there are any significant disruptions, I think the ferries get expensive pretty fast.

I just think that if you are going to be exploring NYC, and not just working here, then I'd rather save the extra expense of going home to New Jersey. That's why I'd suggest that you might consider neighborhoods like Astoria and Sunnyside in Queens, which are both only about 20 minutes to Midtown, and on the same MetroCard that you can go everywhere else in NYC with.