IceBrit

Hello everyone,

WOW what a fantastic forum !! Anyway, I'm new here and wondered if you could recommend a residential area? My husband is transferring to Manhattan and we want to find a family friendly area with excellent train links to the city (not more than an hours journey). As I'm a stay at home mum with a toddler, we would be looking for an area with lots of things to do with the little one and hopefully lots of other mums and kids to spend our days with.

We would be looking to rent a 4 bed house with a nice garden.


Any tips and suggestions would be greately appreciated.
Thank you.

neil

There are lots of similar threads around on this so might be worth a search. New Jersey is a popular one - start by looking at www.njtransit.com and see where the train lines go and timetables for rush hour.

elfman

I'd recommend Montclair NJ, but cheap it is not.
We live in neighbouring Verona and love it (my Mrs is at home with our two kids both aged under two and a half). Verona is better value but the train links aren't quite so good.

Off the top of my head you're looking at around $3,000 a month to rent the sort of place you're looking for

Rete

Do hope your husband is being paid in a six figure range to meet with your high expectations.

Try a search of forum. The subject matter has been done to pieces this year and you will find tons of info.

neil

Montclair is nice, but very expensive. Highland Park (where I live) is similar in some respects (i.e. it's somewhere you can walk around with plenty of local shopping, parks and restaurants). Plenty of kids around too. Depending on where you are in town it's close to either New Brunswick or Edison train stations on the NE Corridor line. There are other places out to the west of Montclair that may be worth looking into. One of the key things is whether you intend to drive or if you want somewhere you wouldn't need a car during the day to get the kids around to all these things you want to do to keep them occupied.

Jerseygirl

Take a look through Englishmum's past posts...you should find plenty of information about moving to NJ together with many links to useful websites.

Bob

Welcome to BE

And as mentioned, search the site and the wiki as lots of info has been posted on the subject

IceBrit

Thank you everyone, you've been very helpful !

I'm sure I'll be back with tons of other questions or hopefully to tell you how great things are once we've moved!

Englishmum

Thanks JG!

True.....too much to re-type all the info again, but for the O/P you can find loads of info - with links - on moving to the NY metro area of New Jersey which I've posted by doing this:

Go to the 'search' box (salmon pink) at the top of this page.

Click on the 'advanced search'

Type in "Millburn" or "Short Hills" (where I live) and the name 'Englishmum' where you can type in the name of the original poster on that subject.....go back in time as far as you wish in the drop-down column. You should get quite a few results!

There is also the local Newcomer's Club which has lots of things for SAHMs and small children eg. cookie bakes, picnics etc.

There is a nursery school in our township (at th Episcopal church (the American version of the C of E!) - St. Stephens in Millburn but all religions are accepted) which is operated by a very nice Englishwoman, Sheelagh Clarke - I've met her as I sometimes collected my friend's children from the pre-school and some British children do go there:

http://www.njkid.org/preschool/index.htm (also see 'our staff)

Worsel

where is your husband going to be working? you might be better off looking at westchester if he's on the east side of town because of the train links. westchester trains go into grand central, nj to penn station on the west side. makes a difference in the mornings i tell you!