What's the deal with Fair Lawn? (Paterson, Clifton: home, to buy, high schools)
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Hi we live in hackensack and finally found a house which is above 500k, but reading all this reviews is not helping at all. We are already confused this particular home is adjacent to plaza rd on rapheal st. Assigned schools are WP and TJ, can somebody pls give us your valuable input ASAP.
I wouldn't pay 500k for that area. It's close to Broadway, for 500k you can get in milnes area.
Hi we live in hackensack and finally found a house which is above 500k, but reading all this reviews is not helping at all. We are already confused this particular home is adjacent to plaza rd on rapheal st. Assigned schools are WP and TJ, can somebody pls give us your valuable input ASAP.
What are you confused about? If it's about Schools, if you read my previous posts in the same thread, you can see WP is good. I have talked to parents sending kids to WP, they all said good about wp. TJ, rad burn and milnes also goes to TJ.
Also, I would not agree to the above comment about for 500+, he will look into milnes area. You have to consider that many people commenting in this thread does not have knowledge about current real estate values in FL (what you get for the money) though they live there, I mean they does not have first hand knowledge. I see a huge disconnect in many posts saying you will get a nice home in milnes for 400+. I have seen most of the houses in the market in FL in the last 3 months (not this month) east of plaza road. The ones in so-called 400 to 500k in milnes, you get a very small home.one i saw had window a/c units..I saw nice updated splits for 550k to 650k in milnes/radburn. WP area, you will get more for the same price, some are new colonials according to my research in zillow. If you go to zillow and select "resently sold" , you can see different comps. You can select homes sold for than 500+ and see the homes in WP and milnes to compare. Also you can see if people are buying for 500+ in WP.
It really depends on what you are looking for. You will get much better homes in wp for the same price point than in milnes. But milnes area is definitely nicer than wp. But wp is not bad at all..it's just thst not as nice as milnes..I have driven around rapheal street and Rosali street. I don't see any issue there.
I guess those towns are not that safe either, at least according to the OP's logic...
Hahahahahaha...that you would call some defense of Fair Lawn. But yeah, jokes apart just one incident does not define the safety of the town - Fair lawn is safe! I wouldn't allow myself to become paranoid based on this one incident. Things like these are reminders to all of us that we need to always cautious and careful regardless of how safe a town is generally perceived to be. But it is horrifying to see anyone hurt. Hopefully the woman in this incident is safe and is recovering from the trauma....wish her well.
Hi we live in hackensack and finally found a house which is above 500k, but reading all this reviews is not helping at all. We are already confused this particular home is adjacent to plaza rd on rapheal st. Assigned schools are WP and TJ, can somebody pls give us your valuable input ASAP.
The area you are referring to is a good area. The price would be driven by what is in offer - so cant comment. If yours is renovated/like new, then yes, you are looking at low to mid 500s. WP is rated 9 (which is great given how competitive NJ schools are!), but the general opinion is that it is not as good as radburn or milnes...which I wonder why - because of this sentiment I am guessing that for the same house you pay 10k more in milnes/radburn?. Kids in WP are from more diverse background/ethinicity. If you want more jewish concentration you get it in milnes/radburn area. If you want more diversity WP is the way to go. Don't fall for the ones who heap praise on the school they are attached to - everyone is going to be biased. Go by statistics from great schools and school digger. If you commute to NYC, your best option would be Braodway train in the mornings and bus back home (to avoid issues with missing the connecting trains in Secaucus in the evenings). If you like bus for both ways, you can walk to morlot ave and 208 and take 148 express.
Overall Fair lawn is a good town with good commute, schools and most of all good friendly people Good luck!
Last edited by cukcoo_nest; 09-21-2016 at 09:21 AM..
If one violent incident is enough for you deem a town unsafe, I'm afraid there are no safe towns.
After thinking about it a bit, I agree with you that one isolated incident does not say much in terms of overall safety. My intention was not to say bad things about Fair Lawn. I came across that story and found it a bit hard to digest based on all the great things I read about Fair Lawn on this forum.
Brain eating amoebas. That is why I won't swim in a lake when I can swim in my own chlorinated pool.
And I drove through Fair Lawn a few days ago. Still reminds me of Carlstadt (without the factories that is). I don't care how many Starbucks they put in Fair Lawn, it is and always be a blue collar town. Nothing wrong with that, but people talk about it like it is Wyckoff.
Well not everyone can afford Ridgewood or Wyckoff. I happen to agree with everyone saying Fair Lawn is one of the most "affordable" towns in Bergen County with everything it offers. Your comments come off as inconsiderate and snobbish.
I started to talk about the District Factor Groups in my previous post and then deleted that part, thinking I was getting too detailed. But since you brought them up, let's roll...
The District Factor Groups are a measure of socioeconomic status of a town. They do not necessarily indicate which schools are the best (more on that in a minute). They have not been updated in many years (the last groupings available were based on 2000 Census data) because the Department of Ed. replaced them with the utterly incoherent and nonsensical peer school system. Still, it's not likely that the demographics of the vast majority of Bergen County towns have changed much since the last DFG groupings were released (although if new rankings were released based on 2010 Census data Wyckoff would very likely be a "J" town).
Now, let's get to my theory that Fair Lawn provides the best bang for the buck in Bergen County. Let's take all the towns in DFG "GH" in Bergen County - Edgewater, Emerson, Fair Lawn, Hillsdale, Leonia, Midland Park, Paramus, Rutherford, Teaneck and Westwood. Let's group them and compare them to Fair Lawn...
Hillsdale, Leonia, Paramus, and Midland Park (maybe) - Yup, their schools are a little better than Fair Lawn's, but you're going to pay about a 30% or higher premium on housing for the tiny bump.
Emerson, Westwood, Waldwick - I would argue that Fair Lawn's schools are slightly better, but you're still going to pay at least a 25% premium to live in one of these towns.
Rutherford - Housing costs are comparable to Fair Lawn's. Fair Lawn's schools are a bit better. It's another very good bang for the buck town.
Edgewater, Teaneck - Housing costs are comparable, but the schools are worse (significantly in Teaneck's case).
OK, let's say the "GH" towns are too fancy for you and you want to move to a "DE" or "FG" town... let's say Dumont (FG), Bergenfield (FG), Saddle Brook (DE), or Carlstadt (DE) to name a few. You might save 5% - 10% on a house as compared to Fair Lawn... but you're going to take a solid hit on the quality of the schools. (BTW, even though Carlstadt itself is grouped in DFG "DE", its regional high school, Henry Becton, which is shared with East Rutherford, is still grouped in DFG "CD".)
"BUT I GOTTA LIVE IN A TOWN CLASSIFIED IN DFG 'I' or 'J'!!!" - Well, you're gonna pay for it... through the nose. You're looking at a minimum of a 50% premium for that bump (in the less fancy sections of Glen Rock) to... well, I'm too tired to count that high now (Saddle River).
As I stared in my previous post, I graduated from Fair Lawn High School, and a solid number of people in my class graduated from Ivy League colleges. I know of at least 5 physicians, 20 attorneys, several PhDs, and a whole lot of other successful people from my class. Do people really need to be so desperate as to spend double the price on a house to give their snowflakes a mostly mythological edge in the world?
I'm now resting my case, and dropping the mic... *BOOM*
Alpine, Franklin Lakes and Tenafly not being classified as "J" towns is baffling to me....
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Good luck!
