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Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Old Feb 27th 2011, 9:26 am
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Default Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

My family and I are moving to New Jersey in the Summer.

My husband will be working in Weehaken.
We have two children 4 and 8 years old.
Rental budget is $3000

The towns I short listed are:
Montclair
Summit
Millburn
Bloomfield

We would obviously like good schools a good downtown and a walkable town would be lovely.

Opinions, advise, pearls of wisdom please.

Thankyou
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Old Feb 27th 2011, 10:56 am
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

You do realize that Weehawken is right by the entrance to Lincoln Tunnel, right? So Your husband would be fighting tunnel traffic (Traffic Hell) on his way to work from all the towns on your short list. Why don't you just look at rentals in Weehawken? Two other close options are Hoboken or Pavonia/Newport (Jersey City).

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Old Feb 27th 2011, 12:51 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by Haynesk
My family and I are moving to New Jersey in the Summer.

My husband will be working in Weehaken.
We have two children 4 and 8 years old.
Rental budget is $3000

The towns I short listed are:
Montclair
Summit
Millburn
Bloomfield

We would obviously like good schools a good downtown and a walkable town would be lovely.

Opinions, advise, pearls of wisdom please.

Thankyou
out of those four Montclair would be top for me and Bloomfield would be bottom. I would also look seriously at Verona.
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Old Feb 27th 2011, 1:35 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by Haynesk
My family and I are moving to New Jersey in the Summer.

My husband will be working in Weehaken.
We have two children 4 and 8 years old.
Rental budget is $3000

The towns I short listed are:
Montclair
Summit
Millburn
Bloomfield

We would obviously like good schools a good downtown and a walkable town would be lovely.

Opinions, advise, pearls of wisdom please.

Thankyou
Hello and welcome to BE.

There's been loads of threads about NJ. Please try to search for threads/posts by Englishmum...also search threads for New Jersey. You can do this by using the Search function...it's located in the blue bar at the top of the page. Go to 'Advanced Search'...make sure you highlight the US Forums in the large box. Give me a shout if you need help with this. Good luck.
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Old Feb 27th 2011, 3:24 pm
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Post Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

What Jerseygirl says lol!

I live in Millburn township and it is the No. 1 public school district in the State of New Jersey (and one of the top public school districts in the whole of the USA). I love the location as it is so close to New York City and it only takes 15-20 mins to get to Newark international airport. You should be able to find a rental for $3k, but most likely in the Millburn section (like an English suburb) rather than the Short Hills section where the house are generally enormous (but you may find one in the Glenwood section of Short Hills). There is the enormous South Mountain Reservation adjacent to the train station and library which is great for walks with lots of trails through the woods.

http://twp.millburn.nj.us/General-Information

I often walk to the 'downtown' which is mostly specialty shops and restaurants/cafes (there is a cinema and a theatre, the 'Paper Mill Playhouse"). The big mall is on the outskirts of town, you can see which shops are there in the link below:

http://www.shopshorthills.com/

If you wish to send your youngest to pre-school, here is a list of them in the local area here:

http://www.millburn.com/school/day.htm

There is a link to St.Stephen's preschool, which is in the downtown across the street from Taylor Park; I often used to go there to collect my friend's children. The Director, Sheelagh Clarke is from London and is really nice. There is another poster on BE from the UK ('Digbydog') who lives in Millburn and with kids in the public schools - it may be worth sending him a PM (which you can do after you've made a few posts) if you want to ask him any questions and about renting a property, he may be be able to give you some info.

I go to the neighbouring town of Summit 2-3 times per week for my excercise class; it's a larger town than Millburn and a similar demographic (eg. middle to upper middle class). There is a wide variation in housing styles and the schools are well-regarded. However in the rental units near the Overlook Hospital there are more Hispanic immigrants, many of them are day-labourers. One of my best girlfriends from London (whom has a 4 year old) is renting a house in Summit, but they don't intend to stay in the US permanently and will probably move on in the next couple of years.

You may also wish to check out Chatham and Madison which are also adjacent to Millburn and Summit with excellent school systems.

I don't know too much about Montclair, it's very spread out - my son goes to the university which is in Upper Montclair. There was a British import shop but it seems to have gone out of business and occasionally I go there on a Sunday morning for brunch at 'Raymonds'. Sorry, can't help with Bloomfield or Verona (I think they're old Italian-American towns?) but Verona has a lovely park! I think Elfman lived in Verona at one time (he posted above) so I guess could give you more detailed info if you have specific questions.
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Old Feb 27th 2011, 5:27 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Thank you everyone that is most helpful.

In terms of schools:

My Son was born in August 2006. Will he go into Kindegarden or preschool? He is currenly in Reception (full time)

My Daughter was born in October 2002 - what grade will she go into?

Thankyou
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Old Feb 27th 2011, 5:57 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by Englishmum
Verona has a lovely park! I think Elfman lived in Verona at one time.
Lived there for three years. Another plus for Verona is that it has an excellent community swimming pool for residents (and their guests) which is open June-July-August.
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Old Feb 27th 2011, 6:07 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by Haynesk
My Son was born in August 2006. Will he go into Kindegarden or preschool?
Kindergarten, since he'll be five before October 2011.
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Old Feb 27th 2011, 9:26 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

also might want to look into city-data.com for some more info on those towns and other areas...
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Old Feb 28th 2011, 1:07 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Following on from Englishmum's post....

We have lived in Millburn for two years and factoring in all the good and bad I would say Millburn/Short Hills is the best town in the area.

You might hear some negative things about the town but that is generally from people who want to live in the town but perhaps cannot afford to.

My kids settled in quickly and made friends very easily. My wife met people through the Newcomers Group and I play football (soccer) for the local team, as do my two sons, and we now seem to know every father in town...

As Englishmum said there are small houses to mansions. We are renting a 3 bed house (recommended by a friend of Englishmum...) within your budget and we will be moving in August if that is of interest to you. Send me a PM if you want.
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Old Feb 28th 2011, 1:13 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by digbydog
Following on from Englishmum's post....

We have lived in Millburn for two years and factoring in all the good and bad I would say Millburn/Short Hills is the best town in the area.

You might hear some negative things about the town but that is generally from people who want to live in the town but perhaps cannot afford to.

My kids settled in quickly and made friends very easily. My wife met people through the Newcomers Group and I play football (soccer) for the local team, as do my two sons, and we now seem to know every father in town...

As Englishmum said there are small houses to mansions. We are renting a 3 bed house (recommended by a friend of Englishmum...) within your budget and we will be moving in August if that is of interest to you. Send me a PM if you want.
Hi,

Thanks so much for that information.

I would be very interested to hear more about the house.
I can't PM it says it is restricted to members with 3 or more posts.

Would it work if you PM'd me first?

Thanks
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Old Feb 28th 2011, 1:18 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by Haynesk
Hi,

Thanks so much for that information.

I would be very interested to hear more about the house.
I can't PM it says it is restricted to members with 3 or more posts.

Would it work if you PM'd me first?

Thanks
That was your 3rd post...you can PM now.
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Old Feb 28th 2011, 9:50 pm
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Question Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by digbydog

We are renting a 3 bed house (recommended by a friend of Englishmum...) within your budget and we will be moving in August if that is of interest to you.
Are you moving out of the area or staying locally - not sure if you were planning to put down roots here and buy a place or not, or are you going on another expat posting?
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Old Feb 28th 2011, 10:56 pm
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by Englishmum
Are you moving out of the area or staying locally - not sure if you were planning to put down roots here and buy a place or not, or are you going on another expat posting?

We have a couple of options to think over. We either stay here and buy a place and do the long term plan here or make the move to sunnier climes.

We do struggle badly with the winters here after HK, Hawaii and Spain. If we are going to leave NJ we need to do it this summer due to the boys ages otherwise we are here for a while....
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Old Mar 2nd 2011, 11:07 am
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Default Re: Moving to New Jersey and need opinions....

Originally Posted by digbydog
We have lived in Millburn for two years and factoring in all the good and bad I would say Millburn/Short Hills is the best town in the area.
It is a very nice area, and I have nothing bad to say about either Millburn or Short Hills. Whether it is the best in the area or not is highly subjective and depends on individual needs. For me, being close to a railroad running into Newark Penn Station is important, since I need a connection to the PATH. So I chose Garwood, which is serviced by the Raritan Valley line. There were a number of other reasons for choosing Garwood as well, but they are not relevant for this discussion.

I know Millburn and Short Hills is serviced by the Gladstone branch, which runs into the Newark Broad Street station (not to be confused with Newark Penn Station), which may or may not be ok, depending on what the final destination is.

I do not know how familiar with the area OP is, or how much of a consideration OP has given to how Hubby is going the get to and from work in Weehawken every day, or how high on OP's priority list a relatively painless commute for Hubby is when picking the area they want to live in. Personally I would be ready to kill someone by the end of the week if I had to drive to Weehawken every day, others may be fine spending most of their commuting time in bumper to bumper traffic.

In the end, it's OP's choice, of course. They have to weigh the pro's and con's and pick where they want to live based on what works for them. Whatever they choose won't have any effect on where I chose to live, or my daily commute - so I wish them luck in whatever choice they make.

Last edited by discoviking; Mar 2nd 2011 at 11:10 am.
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