Essex rail

Towns

Four towns on the direct train with walkable villages. This is the one-seat way to get a full four-bedroom house at $1.25M, and it had the highest share of sales closing above the original asking price in the study.

• MaplewoodTown page
• South Orange
• MontclairTown page
• Glen RidgeTown page

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

The trip

One-seat ride from each of the four towns, with village centers built around the stations. Which station you walk to, and whether you walk or drive, changes the trip more than the town name does.

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.

Homes

Across the group, the median home in the $1.15M–$1.35M band is about 2,256 square feet, built around 1926 (the oldest housing stock in the study), on roughly a fifth of an acre, carrying about $21,900 a year in tax, the highest of any direction. About 80% of these sales had four or more bedrooms, and about 91% closed over the original ask.

Town-level tax medians the study published: Maplewood about $21,800 and South Orange about $23,900 on band sales. The tax carry in this group is real, ongoing cost and belongs in the same conversation as the mortgage payment.

The list price is a bad search filter here. In this band, roughly 94% of Montclair sales closed above their original asking price, and the median original ask was only about $899K. Glen Ridge ran a similar pattern (about 93% over ask, median original ask roughly $874K), as did Maplewood (about 93%, roughly $975K).

The sold sample shows why asking price alone is a poor guide to likely purchase price. Some homes that closed near $1.25M began with much lower asking prices; use relevant closed sales before treating an asking price as the expected purchase price.

This describes homes that closed near $1.25M, not every home listed in that lower range. It is the pattern in the study window in these specific towns, not a rule for the whole study, and markets shift.

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.