South and East Brunswick (New Brunswick, Princeton: buying a house, buying, best school)

[jim_jimmy]

What would be the Pros and Cons of buying a house or townhouse in South or East Brunswick?

Are they safe towns? How are the schools? Are taxes normal high or extremely high?

Thanks

[DodgeViper01]

There are two totally different towns in the sense of the way they are made up. Hopefully this will help you understand a little bit more:

THE TOWNS
Both towns are similar in feel but after that they tend to be different. First off BOTH are VERY safe. Very little tends to happen in this towns.

South Brunswick is a MUCH larger town that East Brunswick and as a result things are not as close to eachother as in East Brunswick. For some people they like this and others they do not.

Both towns have major highways; East Brunswick has Route 18 and South Brunswick has Route 1. East Brunswick is closer to NYC and South Brunswick is closer to Princeton/Pennsylvania.

TRANSPORTATION
East Brunswick offers a bus service to Manhattan and South Brunswick offers this too. East Brunswick if you desire the train you can go to New Brunswick and if you desire the train in South Brunswick, visit Princeton Junction but only if you are close to it!

SCHOOLS
Both towns have on par schools. Both are blue ribbon winners; which really means nothing since enough money will get you this anyway but I digress! In my personal opinion these two towns have the best school systems in Middlesex County but hey that just might be me. South Brunswick did a recent renovation on their high school and now it is the size of a mini town. East Brunswick is comparable with great size schools but the HS in South Brunswick makes East Brunswick (which is already huge) look like a dot on a peice of paper. Both have great teachers, and rank very high with standard test scores.

TAXES
Taxes in both towns are similar in comparison to homes as well. In townhouses there seems to be a little break in South Brunswick. On a 3 Bedroom townhouse you are looking in the $7000 - $8000 range in East Brunswick, and around $5500 - $6500 in South Brunswick. A 4 Bedroom townhouse; if you can find them since they are very rare, taxes tend to run around $8000-$9500 range in East Brunswick and $6000-$7000 in South Brunswick. All of these are +/- $1000.

Hope this information helps. If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot me a PM.

[luckyshoes]

DV kind of covered everything but here's my take.

Both are very nice towns. Both have good schools.

East Brunswick has a slightly better location in general, especially if you work to the north, South Brunswick is good if you work to the south or in the Princeton area.

For transportation, I agree with DV, but I would add that depending where you are in SB, some people drive to the Jersey Avenue station and take the train from there (which is a stop in New Brunswick). In EB, I've heard of people taking the train from Metuchen (getting dropped off though, not driving, hard to get a spot there).

South Brunswick is much bigger and has sections (Kendall Park, Dayton, Monmouth Junction, etc). Not necessarily better or worse.

The one thing I would add, but this would be for any town, is to try to buy a 3 br townhouse if you can. Always a better resale than a 2 br.

Good luck!

[SweepTheLeg]

I lived in both towns. It's a tough call. I hate to say it, but there's a bit more of a "snobbery" factor in East Brunswick than there is in South Brunswick. Mainly because there's a little bit more money in East Brunswick.

However, East Brunswick's services and schools are probably the best in the state.

[ansky]

The thing I don't like about either of these towns is that neither really has a town center (i.e. a downtown business district). When I think of each town I just think of highways and strip malls - route 1 and route 18.