help relocating to Newark (West Orange, Orange: home, transfer, neighborhood)

[beachhead2]

Hi, I looked at the future residents sticky so here is my information:

We're moving from northern New England (New Hampshire). We are being transferred by my husband's employer. He'll be working in downtown Newark. We would like to purchase a single family home for less than $500k. We have two children (7 & 8 years) who currently attend Catholic school. We would like for them to continue attending Catholic schools.

We currently live on several acres in a rural area of New Hampshire and my husband has a 10 minute commute (he doesn't even get on a highway). Our property has a two story barn as well so there is plenty of spillover space where he has a workshop. It's tough for me to say what sort of neighborhood we'd like to live in since I know there's nothing like this near Newark and certainly not in our price range. So I guess I'm looking for the best balance of quiet, short commute, and a Catholic grade school. I'm thinking that's going to be tough to do. If we were to sacrifice one of the three, it would be the short commute. Does that mean Pennsylvania? We are really apprehensive about this move because we love where we are.

Thanks in advance for your help and please let me know if any further information is necessary.

[daliowa]

First thing is to research if his job in Newark is close to Newark Penn Station, which is the New Jersey Transit train station in Newark. Assuming it is then go to www.njtransit.com to see what train lines stop at Newark. You can choose some towns to research based on how long a commute he can tolerate.

Note that there are two Penn Stations, Newark & New York, just keep that in mind so that you don't confuse the two Penn Stations.

In NJ a commute less than one hour is considered good. He'll be spending a lot of time on trains, but at least he won't have to go all the way to Manhattan.

[nybbler]

I'd suggest looking into my own town of West Orange. You're not going to get huge amounts of property like that, but you can get quiet, short commute, and there is a Catholic school. The public schools in W.O. are not considered as good as in surrounding towns, so housing prices are lower (taxes, however, are high). It's a reasonably short drive into Newark.

[HalfFull]

I'm a NH transplant myself. You can get some of the rural feel if you stretch the commute to Morris, Somerset or Hunterdon counties in NJ and still be within a 1 hour commute. Plenty of Catholic schools so that shouldn't be hard to accommodate.

[captne76]

It gets quite rural in some parts of nearby Morris County such as Rockaway, Boonton and Denville Townships and still under an hour, often half that outside of rush hour. You would have to see what the prices are, I have no recent clues on that.