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Hello all, I am in desperate need of some help. This is all so overwhelming. I am moving before Christmas and the research is driving me insane. I am looking for an inexpensive, safe neighborhood to raise my 2yr old son, good daycare/school, easy commute to the city. I am in search of a place in NJ or NY and the apartment would be for a family of 3 (2adults 1 child). Can anyone stare me in the right direction? Just thinking about it I start freaking out.
Fort Lee is convenient, has decent scools, and is affordable. How long of a commute is tolerable for you? It is possible to find a 2BR apartment in a subdivided house in some good areas of New Jersey that are a little further out. Some of these areas, all of which have very good to excellent schools, include: Summit, Westfield, Madison, and Cranford.
Summit is about 25 miles to Midtown; Westfield is about 20 miles; Madison is 28 miles; and Cranford is about 23 miles from Midtown, driving distance.
Some of these communities are quite expensive, but rentals do exist around $1500 a month in subdivided houses in Summit, for example. And, the schools are excellent, communities are safe, and many are very family-oriented. They may be a little bit of a commute, but they are nice suburban towns and cities where a young family would feel very much at home.
I can imagine your stress in moving in such a short time window, compounded by the whims of a toddler, but you should be able to find a nice new community to enjoy in the NYC area. NJTransit does a good job for commuting to Manhattan, and you're close to major highways in much of NNJ, so if you have an intersuburban commute, that should not be too much of an issue.
One caveat, however, go by the school district boundaries, since neighboring communities may have different schools, and they're not all the same. It's not uncommon to have a top-tier district in one area, and then another that looks similar a couple of blocks away is zoned for a more average school district. While the areas I have mentioned a bit further out will not give you problems with the schools and communities, you don't want to just jump into a neighboring town because it looks the same, since there can be differences that are not immediately apparent. Since you're renting, this is not as much of an issue as if you were purchasing, but still, you want to minimize the chance that you'd need to move within the area for a better school district.
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