Many Realtors in North Jersey Seem Misinformed about West Orange.... (Summit: houses, buying)

[Marc Paolella]

Originally Posted by Docendo discimus

Don't you think you're being a little melodramatic? I mean, "statist, local, confiscation of private wealth"? "statist confiscation of private property"? "your freedom has been stripped"? This is hyperbolic (and frankly, paranoid) rhetoric, and it makes you sound a little unhinged. I find it odd that you would want to present yourself in that light, considering you are real estate agent and your name is easily Google-able.

I also find it really unprofessional, that as a real estate agent, you would post such disparaging remarks about West Orange, and the "IDIOTS" who would consider living there, or already do, in "CRAPPY" houses that have "SLIGHTLY MORE PANACHE THAN A DOUBLE-WIDE". West Orange and Essex County are not your market, so who cares, right? You even go so far as to post a specific listing and its address and make negative remarks about that specific property being "old" and "tired". Not your listing, so who cares? Again, unprofessional. If I were the seller, or the agent representing that listing, I would not be happy.

The OP didn't start this thread to debate property taxes, he started it to plug a new local website. And no one here has been an apologist for high taxes or claimed to like them. Pretty much everyone has bemoaned them. The point is, it's obviously still worth it for lots of people to live in West Orange, despite the taxes. Yeah, people like municipal services being offered. Most people need them. The average middle, and upper middle class Joe can't afford a $5 million property in Saddle River and pay out of pocket for services, e.g. spending $35,000 a year per kid to go to private or boarding school. How is West Orange supposed to model themselves after an anomaly like Saddle River?

What's it to you anyway? You, yourself, would never DEIGN to live in West Orange, so it's not like your tax money we're talking about.

FYI, the property taxes in the region that you represent are not exactly low either. Actually, they're on the higher side for the county, and are actually higher than several towns in Essex County. Are you going to be posting about how the idiot home owners and prospective buyers in your market are losing their freedom to a confiscatory statist government? Yeah, I didn't think so.

That's not how condo communities and monthly maintenance fees work. The $390 monthly fee all goes to the HOA who budgets it for maintenance of the common areas (roof & siding repair/replacement, painting, asphalt/pavement, pool/tennis court, etc. etc.), and other services within the complex (garbage collection, snow removal, landscaping, etc. etc.).

NONE of the monthly maintenance fee goes towards property taxes or to West Orange. The town collects property taxes from individual homeowners, not the HOA.

Each homeowner collectively owns the common areas. This is already built into the value of their individual unit, and it is already reflected on their property tax bill. Separate property taxes are NOT collected on the common areas.

It may sound stupid to you to pay a monthly HOA fee, but some people don't want to bother with any home maintenance or upkeep on their own, and they don't want to DIY anything. They'd rather pay to have it all be automatically dealt with. Obviously condo ownership is not for everyone. But it's got nothing to do with property taxes or West Orange.

Let's skip all the personal nonsense. I am probably in the 1% of CityData participants who proudly and irreverently provide all commentary using my real name, unlike those who choose to hide. If you can't say something under your real identity, you really have no business saying anything at all. But, that's how the Internet has developed to date. I use my real name. And yes, some people won't do business with me. Goodbye! Plenty do because I don't pull my punches and make believe something is other than what it is.


The purpose of showing the listing was not the listing. It was to show the ridiculous and yes, confiscatory levels of overtaxation in West Orange. For ordinary middle class properties. It could also have been several other towns, but West Orange came up. So there we are.


I will accept your observation without research that condo HOAs pay no property taxes. It's irrelevant, because that was offered as an extra insult to the mortal injury of overtaxation. The mortal injury remains, even without the insult. Paying $16,000/year for a Bi-Level or $12,000/year for a 2 bedroom townhouse is ROBBERY. If you multiply it by all the properties in the township, you arrive at a grotesque amount of wealth removed from private citizens and wasted on 200 things that I won't enumerate.


As a real estate agent, I think it is my duty to point out situations like this. Buyers should know that moving into certain municipalities will result not in high taxes, but over-the-top crazy high taxes. The reason is usually going to be waste, corruption, mismanagement, and just plain government that is TOO BIG. If other municipalities can do it for much less, we have to ask why. But we can't ask why until we make the initial observation of gross overtaxation.


And that is what we have accomplished here. BUYER BEWARE.

[nybbler]

Originally Posted by bradykp

Well, not entirely true. West Orange gets very little state money for the schools, so we pay a lot more in local property taxes to make up for that. the WO BOE actually attempted to cut various things this year and many people showed up at the meeting to block those cuts.

I'm sure the WO BOE is pursuing a strategy of proposing cuts of things people want, while not touching the things people don't. Washington Monument Strategy works every time.

[Melland]

Originally Posted by Marc Paolella

Here is some more good info: Property taxes in West Orange are absolutely CONFISCATORY. I just did an appraisal and ran into a 20 year old Bi-Level in the unremarkable St. Cloud section with taxes of $16,103!! For a Bi-Level! No basement. No pool. No tennis courts. No land. Vinyl siding. $16,103 bloody dollars every year and for what? WHERE ON EARTH IS THAT MONEY GOING? Who is getting it? What are they doing with it?

I moved out of West Orange last summer for the reasons you mentioned above....In my 8 years in West Orange my taxes went from $10,450 to $17,850....that is right through the housing crisis and recession.

On top of that, the Elementary Schools are very good, but once Middle Schools starts many people start looking at alternatives.

We loved our home and our neighborhood....BUT our taxes were soon going to top $20K for a 2,500 sq ft home AND we would have had to seriously consider private school once the kids got older. That was a deal killer for us....and that we may be stuck with our home once taxes topped 20K.

It's a lovely town, with a diverse population, and some beautiful homes....those are without questions the positives.....but to pay $1,500 a month on property taxes was the deal killer. Now add in Private School on top of it. Sadly, moving was the only option that made sense.

[clearlycanadian]

@Melland why have the taxes increased so much in West Orange? I'm under the impression from your comment that this has happened in the past 10 years? Disappointing to hear as we love the area and have been looking at homes. I'm starting to seriously reconsider given the high taxes. Would like to pay 10 or 11K max (400-500k home) and it seems impossible in that area.

Thanks for the info!

[nybbler]

School district, town, and county spend like drunken sailors. This is true in many other towns but West Orange has no train and a lousy greatschools score, so we have much lower housing values, which makes the taxes even higher as a percentage of property value.

At least the county has something to show for its spending (that recreational complex on the Orange Reservoir). The town has been burning money on a downtown revitalization that so far has pretty much replaced a crosswalk and some traffic lights. The schools... as far as I can tell, they really are burning the money in the basement.

[Marc Paolella]

Originally Posted by clearlycanadian

@Melland why have the taxes increased so much in West Orange? I'm under the impression from your comment that this has happened in the past 10 years? Disappointing to hear as we love the area and have been looking at homes. I'm starting to seriously reconsider given the high taxes. Would like to pay 10 or 11K max (400-500k home) and it seems impossible in that area.

Thanks for the info!

And this is exactly why I wrote my post. It is time we all opened our eyes, and the eyes of our buyers, before considering any town with obscenely high taxation. The decision to move to a town with less intrusive government could save a family $100,000 over 20 years. I think a family could better decide how to use money they earn and own on their own rather than hand it over to a local government where it will end up in some clerk's or bureaucrat superintendent's pension, while you sit there broke and cannot afford to educate your kids. Enough already.

[nykstevenyg]

Originally Posted by clearlycanadian

@Melland why have the taxes increased so much in West Orange? I'm under the impression from your comment that this has happened in the past 10 years? Disappointing to hear as we love the area and have been looking at homes. I'm starting to seriously reconsider given the high taxes. Would like to pay 10 or 11K max (400-500k home) and it seems impossible in that area.

Thanks for the info!

There are many variables with taxes. I am under contract in West Orange on a small house where taxes aren't as bad. When I checked I noticed a tax increase of 2k over 10 years for almost any house I was looking at whether it be West Orange, Verona, Rockaway, Randolph, etc. I have looked in 17 towns technically lol. Taxes are going up every year everywhere.

[nykstevenyg]

Originally Posted by nybbler

School district, town, and county spend like drunken sailors. This is true in many other towns but West Orange has no train and a lousy greatschools score, so we have much lower housing values, which makes the taxes even higher as a percentage of property value.

At least the county has something to show for its spending (that recreational complex on the Orange Reservoir). The town has been burning money on a downtown revitalization that so far has pretty much replaced a crosswalk and some traffic lights. The schools... as far as I can tell, they really are burning the money in the basement.

Agreed, local government really needs to be honed in. Everyone's to busy whining about Trump to actually realize the bigger problems which are local government corruption. Most of the elementary schools have excellent great school ratings, I do agree that the high school is not good.

[nykstevenyg]

Just to clarify on the taxes when I did my research I saw that the taxes in West Orange in the scheme of things were not actually as bad as people made it out to be.

I saw that the lower property values in WO equated to equal or less taxes than in neighboring towns with higher values and lower tax rates. When computing it I saw that the monthly payment would be much higher in say Verona because of a much higher principal and equal taxes.While West Orange taxes are worse and the high school isn't good now, taxes all over the area suck. I will say that I think buying a 700k house in West Orange is crazy. At that point the higher rate has a huge effect on the taxes, personally at that budget id stay out of Essex County and go to Montville. At my budget the the percentage difference wasn't so serious.

There is no question that except for Orange every town West Orange borders is a much better town overall (schools, downtowns, etc). I look at that as upside the town is surround by great towns and inevitably people who cannot afford their first choice go to the cheaper alternative. Hopefully this will allow the schools and high school to improve over time.

[Marc Paolella]

So, for example, let's take a random price point, say $650,000. What are the property taxes likely to be for a home in some northern NJ towns? Millburn: $11,500. Summit: $10,200. Chatham: $9,300.

West Orange: $21,500