Muswell Hill

I live in Charleston, SC right now and I have a job possibility in Manhattan and would like to hear experiences of living in eastern NJ within commutable distance to the city and NY above Manhattan in Westchester county. Cost of housing, schools, taxes etc

Cheers!
MH

Rete

Lots of info in the wiki and in this forum. Do a search for Englishmum and pull up quite a bit. Also go back a week or so and you will find about 6 more like posts.

Swisstony

It's very nice here.

Englishmum

Yep.....over the past few years I've made loads of posts on living in NJ for commuters working in NYC....

My English next-door neighbour sold his house last week (at the first open house), pity you didn't get there first lol!

I'm in Short Hills, NJ which has the zipcode 07078 but is in the same township and school district of Millburn, NJ - zipcode 07040. It's the #1 public school district in New Jersey. (Actually I'm not in NJ right now, I'm in Singapore as my spouse is on an expat posting here).

If Millburn/SH is unaffordable, do check out Cranford, NJ which is a very pretty town and housing taxes are much lower although I understand that it has a good school district. There is a river in Cranford, check for flooding....there's been a lot of flooding in NJ over the past few weeks. However, you don't get a direct train service into NYC, you need to change trains at Newark to the trains on NJ Transit to Midtown, or take the PATH to the downtown financial district. The trains also go to Newark airport.

Westfield is next to Cranford, very pretty but more expensive. Summit, Chatham, Madison also nice towns but further out (spouse used to work in Times Square, the absolute max commute he would ever consider was one hour door-to-door from home to office, which is one of the reasons we moved to SH...). Maplewood is also a lovely town, (Ridski who posts here lives there) but schools not so highly rated there.

Also check out the NJ forums on http://www.city-data.com

Ridski

Same here.

Either side is going to be pretty expensive in terms of housing, commuting and property taxes. If you have kids, it'll probably end up coming down to which school district you prefer, and what kind of vibe you get from the town.

We have no kids, so we went for a town where you could easily walk to the rain station, town center and pub, and had a welcoming atmosphere.

Good luck with your search!

Bill_S

I thought people left the UK to get away from the rain

Englishmum

You would not believe the amount of snow and rain which has bedevilled New Jersey in the past few weeks.... (One week we had a load of snow - I took the tape measure outside and we had 11 inches. The following week we had more snow...this time it was 13 inches. Then a few days later we had 48 hours of very heavy rain. I flew off to the Far East on 19 March, but my son is in our NJ house and I understand that there has still been significant amounts of rainfall.

I'm soooo grateful that I had a new French drain and sump pump installed in my basement last Summer, otherwise it would definitely be under water by now and I know that many local residents in our town and surrounding towns have had a lot of flooding in their basements.

I bet they will announce a drought in the Summer though, lol!

Muswell Hill

Cheers for all that! A friend recommended Edison, what do you know about that town?

Ridski

I have rellies in Edison, but I haven't really seen much of it apart from the cul-de-sac they live in. Seems like a nice place, though. Trains are regular to NY Penn Station, take about 47mins to an hour, but because they run on the same line as Amtrak, if anything happens to the Amtrak trains (which happens frequently) that line's trains are usually the first to get canceled, so be advised. Our trains (Montclair-Boonton Line) can be redirected to Hoboken in an emergency, but that line, the Northeast Corridor, can't. Minor point, but if you're commuting 5 days a week, it becomes more important.

You are pretty close to two really good shopping malls along Route 1/9, though, which is a plus.

Jerseygirl

I was in the UK most of March so I missed most of the rain...the weather there was fabulous and it didn't rain once. 7" fell in one day forcing the St Patrick's day parade to be cancelled in Mo'town. The day I left for the airport (26 Feb) Newark airport had been closed for 2 days due to snow...it was reopened mid afternoon. When we opened the garage door there was 2 ft of snow on the drive. We drove to the airport in blizzard conditions...I kept thinking there is no way I'm flying out of here tonight. Fortunately the plane did leave and was only 30 mins late.

NJ gets more rain per year than the UK. The difference is...we don't get days on end of drizzle...when it rains it absolutely pours down. We also seem to get rain during the night...especially in summer

Ridski

Well, I did make a typo, but maybe rain station wasn't that far off! True, we've had about 13 inches of rain in two weeks, on top of all the snow. The storm water keeps getting mixed with the sewer lines and backing them up. I had to take Tuesday off to help pump sewage out from my basement utility sink for about 9 hours. Two weeks before that, during that massive weekend storm we had, we didn't have the pump yet and we had to use buckets for 6 hours straight.

Maybe you don't really want to move to NJ after all, Muswell!

Ridski

True dat. We also get some wicked electrical storms!

Jerseygirl

The train from Morristown/Convent Station/Madison to Penn takes 60 mins...a little further west than Summit but they are still expensive areas to live.

Jerseygirl

Yes we do...then the power goes out.

coral11680

I lived in Edison for 9 years (now back in the UK). I liked it there. Not sure how long it takes to travel to NY about 45 mins on the train I think from either Edison or Metuchen Train station. Menlo Mall and Woodbridge Mall are close by.