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An article in New York Magazine (Affordable Suburbs: Maplewood, N.J.) found Maplewood to be among the more affordable NYC suburbs with a good quality of life and, supposedly, decent schools. Without getting into opinions on what constitutes affordable, I would be curious to get some opinions from locals about this town.
It does seem that for a town this close and commutable to Manhattan, the homes are lower priced than I expected, e.g. a few single family homes under 400K. Is there something this article is not mentioning? Low flying Newark bound planes or high crime?
An article in New York Magazine (Affordable Suburbs: Maplewood, N.J.) found Maplewood to be among the more affordable NYC suburbs with a good quality of life and, supposedly, decent schools. Without getting into opinions on what constitutes affordable, I would be curious to get some opinions from locals about this town.
It does seem that for a town this close and commutable to Manhattan, the homes are lower priced than I expected, e.g. a few single family homes under 400K. Is there something this article is not mentioning? Low flying Newark bound planes or high crime?
you need to be careful because maplewood does border some very high crime/low income areas that are full of undesirables, other than that it can be a great place to live.
if you want to buy there just be certain that you do your homework
I grew up in South Orange and went to elementary school and high school in Maplewood because they share a school district. Maplewood has a very quaint downtown. I love the homes in that area. There are definitely some less desireable areas so as apvbguy says "do you homework". I think you need to take a close look at the schools. You need to be comfortable with the high diversity.
Many thanks. High diversity is great as long as the quality of the schools is high as well. Not knowing much about NJ towns, I just went to schoolmatters.com and compared a more high priced town's school district (Westfield) to Maplewood/S.Orange and the latter seems to have lower scores on indicators such as math and reading proficiency and others - and about 10 times as many "economically disadvantaged" students. It's sad that this tends to correspond with more challenged school districts.
An article in New York Magazine (Affordable Suburbs: Maplewood, N.J.) found Maplewood to be among the more affordable NYC suburbs with a good quality of life and, supposedly, decent schools. Without getting into opinions on what constitutes affordable, I would be curious to get some opinions from locals about this town.
It does seem that for a town this close and commutable to Manhattan, the homes are lower priced than I expected, e.g. a few single family homes under 400K. Is there something this article is not mentioning? Low flying Newark bound planes or high crime?
The few times i visited Maplewood i found it to be a nice friendly place
i don't know anything about the school system but they do have a great
fish market ..Freemans Fish Market on maplewood ave
Maplewood is a very nice and quiet town with a lot of old and huge houses that get pretty pricey some over a million and taxes over 20k a year, it has a lot of tree lined streets and parks. Maplewood has been doing a lot of work last couple years to improve the image of the town, they redone whole section of Springfield ave from Vauxhall to Irvington and now it looks beautiful, then there is a village with train station which makes you think you are in europe of a very rich town. Overall Maplewood is a very quiet town but would stay away from section that borders Newark but thats about it.
The Common Myths/rumors Are Very Little Or Not Present
ok...
1.) yes maplewood is located very close to newark airport ( i dont know less than 10 miles east is the airport) but here luckily we dont have to deal with the loud fly over planes because the main runway runs north and south and maplewood is west so we arent in the path of landing or taking off planes, although occasionally we will get planes landing on the east and west runway.
2.) There are more desirable areas of Maplewood than others but there is no hood or maplehood (as the locals call it) The east side of maplewood is where the smaller homes and less historic homes are. This is near springfield av/boyden av/van ness area.
The west side near ridgewood/wyoming and the reservation is more upscale and more attractive but as far as there being a nasty or gang infested area, it just doesn't exist. The crime spills over very little or none from near by irvington and newark.
1) NY Times - published 15 months ago (I hope things are better now):
Lock the Library! Rowdy Students Are Taking Over
"Every afternoon at Maplewood Middle School’s final bell, dozens of students pour across Baker Street to the public library. Some study quietly. Others, library officials say, fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians or refuse to leave when asked. One recently threatened to burn down the branch library. Librarians call the police, sometimes twice a day..."
2) This was posted just a few days ago - by a Maplewood resident:
"...my 2001 A4 was stolen from my driveway, the second time in the 7 months since I've lived here in Maplewood. We live on a quiet street, and admittedly, we were too lazy/tired to box it in Saturday night when we got home so we just pulled it behind our other car. The police officer said that the thieves know where the hot cars are (he specifically mentioned Audi & Honda Civic) and drive around looking for vulnerabilities each night, isn't that comforting?..."
M/SO Community Forum - Our Audi was stolen, again (http://www.southorangevillage.com/vc/comments.php?DiscussionID=20752&page=1#Item_0 - broken link)
Quote:
Originally Posted by B_MA
An article in New York Magazine (Affordable Suburbs: Maplewood, N.J.) found Maplewood to be among the more affordable NYC suburbs with a good quality of life and, supposedly, decent schools. Without getting into opinions on what constitutes affordable, I would be curious to get some opinions from locals about this town.
It does seem that for a town this close and commutable to Manhattan, the homes are lower priced than I expected, e.g. a few single family homes under 400K. Is there something this article is not mentioning? Low flying Newark bound planes or high crime?
You have to take those articles with a grain of salt...
I think there's much better places in NJ with homes with similarly priced homes and close proximity to NYC
like what?
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The Common Myths/rumors Are Very Little Or Not Present
