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@banger- we have searched everywhere from Chtham to Montclair and it really is all the same as far as what we are finding. Weve looked in Scotch Plains too with even less houses to choose from. Im just taking it in stride and assuming the house we found (if all goes well) is the right house for right now and I can always (hopefully) upgrade to more epace later if i like WF eough to stay. its just my mindset growing up in NY, you equate NJ with space and the funny thing is, thats only true in parts of NJ that are far from NYC. Everyone from Bklyn moves to Marlboro or Old Bridge and thats not our style at all. plus, we are done with brooklyn and brooklyn types. LOL Those areas arent right for us or my husbands commute. I just have to realize that close to NYC means smaller yeards, smaller houses and bigger prices. hard pill to swallow but Im getting it.
@banger- we have searched everywhere from Chtham to Montclair and it really is all the same as far as what we are finding. Weve looked in Scotch Plains too with even less houses to choose from. Im just taking it in stride and assuming the house we found (if all goes well) is the right house for right now and I can always (hopefully) upgrade to more epace later if i like WF eough to stay. its just my mindset growing up in NY, you equate NJ with space and the funny thing is, thats only true in parts of NJ that are far from NYC. Everyone from Bklyn moves to Marlboro or Old Bridge and thats not our style at all. plus, we are done with brooklyn and brooklyn types. LOL Those areas arent right for us or my husbands commute. I just have to realize that close to NYC means smaller yards, smaller houses and bigger prices. hard pill to swallow but Im getting it.
That is pretty funny, given that NJ is the most densely populated state in the nation. I have a friend who lived in Manhattan until she was thirty years old and then married a guy from NJ and moved out to Bergen County. She could not get over the fact that there were so many apartment complexes in NJ. She thought everyone in NJ lived in a house. (She also wanted to know what that weird noise was that she heard at night when summer came. It was crickets.)
Regarding the "Brooklyn types": Another friend who grew up in NJ married a Brooklyn guy and lived there for a while, and then they sold their house in Brooklyn and moved to Middletown, where a lot of the residents came from Brooklyn or Staten Island. When we drive around her neighborhood, she'll point out the houses of the people she can tell came from Brooklyn originally--they have all these statues and whatnot in their front yards, just as they did on their handkerchief lawns in Brooklyn.
@mightqueen- I know EXACTLY what you are referring to when you say "statues". I call them "mary on a half shell". Everyone (except me) has one.
Im trying to avoid brooklyn types which is exactly why we arent moving to Malrboro, Old Bridge or Middletown or Manalapan. Nothing wrong with these people, I just need something new. If I wanted Brooklyn, Id stay here.
OP--I know what you mean about living in NY and equating NJ with so much space. I grew up in Queens, "we" usually move to LI but I married a guy from NJ so across the river I came. I'd been here before to visit family & friends and everything seemed to shiny and spacious but once I started to look for housing I was having major WTF moments. THEN I realized all the people I knew that lived in NJ had WAAAAAAAY more money then I was giving them credit for! I guess I just assumed people lived in NJ to save money over NYC prices, how very wrong that assumption was! So there went my delusions of living in Westfield or Ridewood...
OP--I know what you mean about living in NY and equating NJ with so much space. I grew up in Queens, "we" usually move to LI but I married a guy from NJ so across the river I came. I'd been here before to visit family & friends and everything seemed to shiny and spacious but once I started to look for housing I was having major WTF moments. THEN I realized all the people I knew that lived in NJ had WAAAAAAAY more money then I was giving them credit for! I guess I just assumed people lived in NJ to save money over NYC prices, how very wrong that assumption was! So there went my delusions of living in Westfield or Ridewood...
I think that's a common misperception that some New Yorkers have. Of course, nothing in NJ is like Manhattan apartment rental prices for the equivalent square footage, but it's hardly cheap to live here. Every so often, we get a New Yorker looking to move to NJ and is asking where they can find a two-bedroom apartment in a nice suburban tree-lined town with good schools, etc., etc., etc., and they don't want to pay more than $800...build a time machine, man, and get back to 1985 because that's the only place you'll find anything like that.
We've been house hunting in WF for almost 8 months now and we were told the market would really pick up in the spring but honestly, everything we see is so dumpy. We arent looking for perfect but, wow!! Seems like there is so little that's decent out there right now. And it may be a buyers market in the rest of the US but certainly not in WF........
Certain towns in NJ are definitely red hot right now and it feels like '04-'06 all over again with multiple offers and bidding war on property. if you don't have to move during the summer season one may choose to stay away from the market for now and come back after the school sesson start. The bidding frenzy hopefully may subside somewhat.
@banger- we have searched everywhere from Chtham to Montclair and it really is all the same as far as what we are finding. Weve looked in Scotch Plains too with even less houses to choose from. Im just taking it in stride and assuming the house we found (if all goes well) is the right house for right now and I can always (hopefully) upgrade to more epace later if i like WF eough to stay. its just my mindset growing up in NY, you equate NJ with space and the funny thing is, thats only true in parts of NJ that are far from NYC. Everyone from Bklyn moves to Marlboro or Old Bridge and thats not our style at all. plus, we are done with brooklyn and brooklyn types. LOL Those areas arent right for us or my husbands commute. I just have to realize that close to NYC means smaller yeards, smaller houses and bigger prices. hard pill to swallow but Im getting it.
a friend of mine lives in West Caldwell and has a 2300ish sq ft house with a gigantic back yard. Sometimes when I come on here and read people's problems with finding a house, I wonder what planet some folks are on. There's plenty of large(r) houses with nice properties. I looked at one house that had a narrow but long property. Full length was around 100 yards. That's a football field. it was only 75 feet wide though.
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