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My wife and I made the move back in the summer of 2012. We refused to buy a home in Bergen, Essex, and even some towns in Union Counties with the property taxes you usually see in such places under the justification of being in a "good school district". We are both professionals, but understood that a great portion of your child perfomance in school depends highly on the level of involvement from us as parents. So, we bought our home in Middlesex County at the bottom of the housing crash. We renovated the house from top to bottom and paid it cash, paid off our mortgage in six and a half years, and our son is doing great in school. Our property tax is $8,300 a year and couldn't be happier.
So what's my point? I see a lot of homeowners paying crazy money for their homes on top of the property taxes. We are not making the right decisions and when we do it is based solely on trends, wrong percetions, and relinquishing our responsabilities onto others (education). Not to mention, that as long as we continue to vote on the basis of political biases, we won't be able to hold out local politicians accountable for the misnagement they have engaged for decades. People in higher tax counties are going to feel the pain big time.....specially next year.
1. Overturn Abbott v. Burke and have the welfare cities start paying for themselves
2.Start setting salary caps on public sector positions ($70k for teachers)
3.Ban public sector pensions for all non-firefighters/LEO’s/CO’s (these are the jobs that actually are actually straining on the body
4. Get rid of most of the pointless office positions who don’t do much
5.Start using more internships
It’s not pretty.
It’s not politically correct.
It certainly gets the job done and saves the future of this state
The article cites a couple paying $37,000 in property taxes in Old Tappan. Who then moved to Saddle River and are now paying $27,000 on a bigger house/property. It’s not applicable to the 95% of people who are not living in multi million dollar homes.
Saddle River only has cheaper property taxes because it is almost exclusively million dollar plus homes, including many very high end mansions. Old Tappan does have some middle class housing and the housing for the rich is a couple notches below Saddle Rivers.
You can certainly cross shop the lower end of the market of Saddle River and possibly Alpine with the upper end of the market of Ridgewood and Tenafly and reasonably conclude that the rich towns offer a better value from a property tax perspective. But you also need to think about the baggage that comes along with that, including pressure to keep up with the joneses and perhaps an issue with the types of peers that your children (if you have school aged children) are likely to have. I considered this myself and concluded that it probably wouldn't make sense to buy into the low end of a super rich town, even if the economics are pretty compelling.
1. Overturn Abbott v. Burke and have the welfare cities start paying for themselves
2.Start setting salary caps on public sector positions ($70k for teachers)
3.Ban public sector pensions for all non-firefighters/LEO’s/CO’s (these are the jobs that actually are actually straining on the body
4. Get rid of most of the pointless office positions who don’t do much
5.Start using more internships
It’s not pretty.
It’s not politically correct.
It certainly gets the job done and saves the future of this state
lol, 70% salary cap on teacher's salaries? You sure don't want to attract any talent.
NJ has a situation where the most elite towns...Saddle River, Alpine, Short Hills, Far Hills, Rumson and Harding have some of the lowest tax rates in the state. Newark otoh has a high rate.
Of the course living in some of these exclusive places is kind of like getting into Harvard, the hardest part is getting in, ie having the money to purchase there.
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