A
Direction A of six at $1.25M

Premium train towns

Towns
Summit, Chatham, Millburn / Short Hills
Transit structure
One-seat ride to Penn Station
What you get
Low tax for the price, walkable downtowns, the direct train.
What you give up
The smallest homes in the study, at the bottom of what these towns' own markets sell.
Study medians for this direction
Median size~1,740 sf
4+ bedrooms~29%
Median vintage~1947
Median lot~0.21 ac
Median tax~$13.9K
Sold over ask~79%

Group medians across the 616-sale study, Sep 2025–Sep 2026. Not a promise about any specific house. Method and limits.

Towns

Three towns, each with a one-seat ride and a walkable downtown. This is the group where $1.25M buys the least house in the study, because it sits at the bottom of what these towns' own markets sell.

  • SummitTown page
  • Chatham
  • Millburn / Short Hills

Towns with a link have a DeSilva town page; for the others, the group figures are the evidence.

The trip

One-seat ride to Penn Station from all three towns; the trip is the reason these towns command what they do. Walkability to the station is part of the value here, and it varies by neighborhood within each town.

No timed rides are quoted anywhere in this study. Door-to-desk time depends on your office, your train and your schedule; check the published NJ Transit schedule for your actual travel date, and test the trip at the hour you would make it.

Schools

The study does not score or rank schools, and neither does this page. Three checks matter more than a single rating: the state’s School Performance Reports for the district and each school; the specific programs your student needs, which a headline rating never captures; and address assignment, because in several of these towns the elementary school is set by street. Confirm the assignment for a specific address with the district before you write an offer. Every reader sees the same information here.

Open a town’s official NJ district report:

Report year: 2024–2025. Links checked 2026-09-28. Opens on the NJ Department of Education website in a new tab. Confirm school assignment for a specific address with the district.

Homes

Across the group, the median home in the $1.15M–$1.35M band is about 1,740 square feet, built around 1947, on roughly a fifth of an acre, carrying about $13,900 a year in tax. Only about 29% of these sales had four or more bedrooms, the lowest share of any direction, and about 79% closed over the original ask.

Two town-level figures the study published: Millburn / Short Hills homes in this band run roughly 1,660 square feet at the median, the smallest of any town in the study; Summit's representative current tax median on band sales is about $12,900, among the lowest for the price.

Across the study's directions, another $250K generally corresponded to about 6% to 19% more space within a direction. Changing direction moves the picture further: the group with the largest homes at this budget runs about 75% larger. If space is the constraint, that is the comparison to make.

Figures are group medians from the 616-sale study (Sep 2025–Sep 2026); above-grade square footage is the assessor's figure matched to the closed sale and excludes finished basements. No individual sold addresses are published. Method and limits.

Same money, other directions

Two ways to keep going

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Track $1.25M in this direction

An email when something changes at this budget: new closed-sale readings for the directions you check, the week's rate move stated as a payment at a $1.25M expected sale price, and the study's quarterly refresh notes. Direction A is checked for you; add others if you are weighing them.

Tracking is not open yet. We are verifying the routing before anyone is enrolled, so this page collects nothing for it today.

Open now: the PDF guide, the weekly Tape with its own email sign-up, and the investigate request beside this.

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Tell us where you're considering, your range and timing, and what you're trying to figure out. We run it against the closed-sale record and reply ourselves, within one business day. One reply; it does not enroll you in anything.

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