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where in the general vicinity of WO is a comparable house $100K more? (not talking mansions)
i purchased a house in WO for $445,000. I looked at houses in surrounding cities (verona, south orange, etc) that had slightly lower taxes, maybe $3k less, but were listed anywhere from $50-$100k more.
i purchased a house in WO for $445,000. I looked at houses in surrounding cities (verona, south orange, etc) that had slightly lower taxes, maybe $3k less, but were listed anywhere from $50-$100k more.
listed, not sold. 2 very different animals, especially in this market. lots of people are still under the delusion it's 2005.
eta: a $75k difference in price yields about $400 more a month, offset by $250 in taxes if what you say about the houses are true. and that's just today. your P&I will remain the same but your taxes will go up. i just have a hard time believing similar homes in verona and SO cost that much more, unless we're talking about a crappy section of WO compared to a great section of SO and Verona.
i'm not sure i'd want to pay out $100,000 more now to save a few thousand a year on taxes. that $100,000 extra is accruing interest over the life of your loan.
but i understand, taxes rarely, if ever, go down - they likely will only go up. but we as residents need to voice our concern and hold our elected officials accountable.
I've done the math on this, and as far as I can tell, the market is fairly myopic in that it is driven by the monthly payments you'd pay today. I concluded for example that 470k in mountainside is cheaper than 386k in WO.
So in the high price/low tax town, you have about the same monthly payment as you do in the low price/high tax town, but your payments will go up at a faster rate in the high tax town (because a greater proportion of your payment goes to the part of your bill that is increasing). A basic rule of thumb is that 1000/year increase in property tax takes about 20k from the sticker price you can afford. If you save 5k in taxes, you can increase your budget by 100k and have the same monthly payment.
High prices, high taxes and crappy schools. What a deal...
Crappy schools? We got our town newsletter in the mail back in June. It listed every college/university that students from WOHS were accepted to this year. Among the schools were Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. Not sure how anyone could think the schools are crappy when students are being accepted into Ivy League universities.
Crappy schools? We got our town newsletter in the mail back in June. It listed every college/university that students from WOHS were accepted to this year. Among the schools were Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. Not sure how anyone could think the schools are crappy when students are being accepted into Ivy League universities.
I think it's a travesty that the primary piece of information that is reported about school performance, and therefore used by most pundits to rank schools, is mean SAT scores. No baselines, no adjustments for SES, no information on what colleges the graduates get into. In fact they don't even give you information about the distribution of SAT scores so you can figure it out yourself (e.g. if the top 50% in West Orange are doing as well as Millburn, that's not so bad)
It is also somewhat surprising that the districts that are hurt by this system do not respond more forcefully (e.g. by both lobbying for better ways to report statistics, and by being more aggressive in making it known that their alumni do well)
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this hurts the reputation of the more diverse towns and exacerbates the fear and contempt that NJ suburbanites already have for the poor and minorities -- ironic for a supposedly progressive state.
High prices, high taxes and crappy schools. What a deal...
Convenient Manhattan commutes via the jitney service and/or easy access to 280, parks, trees everywhere, best house prices you'll find on the NY-facing slope of the Watchung ridge, lower crime than most other Essex County commuter towns (e.g. Montclair, South Orange, Maplewood).
Convenient Manhattan commutes via the jitney service and/or easy access to 280, parks, trees everywhere, best house prices you'll find on the NY-facing slope of the Watchung ridge, lower crime than most other Essex County commuter towns (e.g. Montclair, South Orange, Maplewood).
Fine (better than fine) for DINKYs. Wouldn't be high on my list for schooling kids.
Crappy schools? We got our town newsletter in the mail back in June. It listed every college/university that students from WOHS were accepted to this year. Among the schools were Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. Not sure how anyone could think the schools are crappy when students are being accepted into Ivy League universities.
How many kids got into Ivy League schools / vs went nowhere fast? Your statement is pointless without hard numbers.
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