F
Direction F of six at $1.25M

Most house, longest ride

Towns
Scotch Plains, Basking Ridge, Wayne, Denville, Bernardsville, Mahwah, Montvale, Ramsey
Transit structure
The longest, often the most complex, ride into the city
What you get
The most space and the newest homes in the study; two-car garages are the norm.
What you give up
The longest, and often the most complex, ride into the city.
Study medians for this direction
Median size~3,082 sf
4+ bedrooms~92%
Median vintage~1978
Median lot~0.54 ac
Median tax~$19.0K
Sold over ask~61%

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

Towns

Eight towns where $1.25M buys the most house in the study. The trade is the ride: the longest, and often the most complex, of the six directions.

  • Scotch Plains
  • Basking Ridge
  • Wayne
  • Denville
  • Bernardsville
  • Mahwah
  • Montvale
  • Ramsey

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

The trip

The longest ride into the city, and often the most complex. The study groups these eight towns by that ride, not by a single line, and none of them is a short one-seat trip. If the commute is daily, this direction is the one to test hardest before you fall for a house.

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 3,082 square feet, built around 1978 (the newest stock in the study), on just over half an acre, carrying about $19,000 a year in tax. About 92% of these sales had four or more bedrooms, and about 61% closed over the original ask, the lowest share of any direction. Two-car garages are the norm.

One town-level figure the study published: Denville homes in this band run roughly 3,420 square feet at the median, the largest of any town in the study, against roughly 1,660 in Millburn / Short Hills for nearly identical money.

The Bergen County towns in this group (Mahwah, Montvale, Ramsey) rest on a smaller, deed-based sample than the rest of the study.

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 F is checked for you; add others if you are weighing them.

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

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