Counterargument: NJ is more expensive
“Dave Carson” posted this comment in this thread:
New Jersey is too expensive to live in? BS! Tenafly’s high schools and house prices. [Burbed.com]
Your statements are a bit off, in fact way off.
Forget home prices, in which we have you beat anyway. Median per capita income, we are SECOND in the nation. CT. being 1st. We have two Counties in the top 4 for highest property taxes, Hunterdon and Somerset. We are the SECOND wealthiest state in the union. You really should get your FACTS stright before you go spouting off.
By the way, I am not a proponent of living in NJ, I think it is ridiculously out of control. But your statements are just plain wrong. Besides, the Bay area is a real pit of debachery lately, too many left-wing commies, and America haters. So, while it sucks to live here if you are not wealthy, I’d rather be here than in SF with the communists.
I don’t know about you, fellow Burbed readers – but I certainly can’t stand for these derogatory comments about our place of residence: How dare he claim that housing is cheaper here compared to New Jersey!
Here are the facts:
- Median SFH price in NJ: $376,500
- Median SFH price in fancy Northern NJ: $462,500
- Median SFH price in CA: $530,830
- Median SFH price in awesome Silicon Valley: $790,000
Oh, excuse me. I just died laughing at how cheap living in New Jersey is.
Finally, Dave, who cares about incomes. That’s so last century. The paradigm has shifted. When you own a home, that is income – you just unlock that trapped equity. You east coasters simply don’t get it. It’s all about the house.
Readers, what do you think? Am I missing something here?
November 14th, 2007 at 10:32 am
The real reason why the Bay Area is ridiculous is that a $600,000 house in a slummy part of San Jose will look like a $200,000 house in Trenton, in terms of age, size, and upkeep. Compare apples to apples and the picture becomes clearer.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:34 am
I thought NJ is full of “left-wing commies, and America haters” too. At least we have a governator who is not exactly “left-wing”. How about NJ? I am wondering what Mr. “Dave Carson” is doing in NJ.
November 14th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Don’t forget that NJ is the state where the governor was riding without a seatbelt in a car that was going 80 in a 55 while a freakin’ State Trooper was in the back seat.
November 14th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
>>Don’t forget that NJ is the state where the governor was riding without a seatbelt in a car that was going 80 in a 55 while a freakin’ State Trooper was in the back seat.
But it was driven by a State Trooper. Corzine was probably just jealous of our Governator.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
For justice, we must go see Tony Soprano…
New Jersey? I wouldn’t want to FLY OVER that dump.
November 14th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Lafayette & El Camino Real. I dare, yes, DARE New Jersey to come up with a more squalid, slummy, has-been place.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Uh… there’s Newark, NJ. It’s probably worse since I believe it was the carjacking capitol.
But then again, the median home price there is ~$270k. About 1/2 of the equivalent area in San Jose.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Not withstanding the differential in median home prices, you gotta look at what a median priced home in NJ looks like. It looks like a million dollar home in the Bay Area!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I sort of had an example in the original post.
http://www.burbed.com/2007/11/02/new-jersey-is-expensive-to-live-in-bs-tenaflys-high-schools-and-house-prices
November 14th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I love all the red faced rhetoric too… what do commies have to do with anything anymore? Is this guy for real? Where did he come from? Did I just wake up in 1950?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
ESR: New Jersey has slums that make our trailer parks look good. But they’re priced accordingly, i.e. under $75,000 for a flat.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Been to the burbs in NJ many years ago. There’s nothing to do there…maybe go fishing on the weekend. It’s that type of place. Never found a reason to visit again.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Ok, I live in NJ – Hunterdon County – and used to commute to the Bay Area weekly – so I happen to love both places – a lot.
There is no question that home prices in the SF area are far higher, on average than anywhere in NJ, including Hunterdon, which is now the wealthiest county in the United States. What I can say is that property taxes on typical $600-900k homes here (and that is the typical range in the northern tier of the county) is probably $15k to $25k per year. Our schools are far better than those in California, and I base that on having friends with kids – and who are teachers in both places. And our traffic is a lot easier to handle – except for all the Pennsylvania folks driving through our county to get to work in NY.
Oh, did I mention, we are an hour from New York City, which as much as I love SF, is kind of a nice place to visit??? BTW, yes, Hunterdon is 95% Republican (not me) – but they are the Christy Whitman/Nelson Rockefeller Republicans – pro-choice, anti-war.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I live in socal now, but I grew up in New Jersey (Mercer County) and spent 3 years living in San Francisco. My parents still live there, along with some of my relatives.
A NJ suburb may not be the most exciting place in the world, but you can visit Philly and NYC from central NJ about as easily as someone can get to San Francisco and San Jose. Whether the cities compare to each other favorably, well that’s another story.
Anyways, back to real estate. When I grew up in NJ, we measured lot sizes in acres. I suspect that recent construction resembles CA real estate, but there’s a lot of old housing developments out there. Even in socal, anything I buy will be measured in sq. ft, and god forbid my career takes me back north.
November 15th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I recently bought a townhouse on the outskirts of San Jose…I paid as much for my place as my parents’ house in PA is worth, and they’ve got two acres on the side of a mountain…
November 15th, 2007 at 9:40 am
@15: But do your parents have access to so many Targets? Probably not.
November 18th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Hi,
I am moving from a 2400sq ft 9 room – 3 bedroom split level home on a wooded lot in a blue ribbon school district to the East Bay.
The house I am selling is 35 minutes by car to midtown Manhattan when there is no traffic (weekends) and 1 hour and 15 minutes by NJ Transit train when I went to work. There are 3 shopping malls within 20 minutes, the regional public theater within 10 minutes, South Mountain Reservation Parkland within 5 minutes and several movie theaters within 10 minutes. The Jersey shore is less than an hour away.
The price for my house? $540,000.
Taxes on said house – $8000.
Lets compare what I am looking at in the East Bay, ostensibly Berkeley, Piedmont/Montclair, Albany. First of all $540 buys a dump with 2 small bedrooms if I am lucky and no land. For something reasonably close (and there are not alot of reasonably close homes), I am looking at homes at or slightly above $1mm. Given taxes of 1.3% that’s about $13,000.
Is NJ cheaper? You bet.
-c
November 18th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
So why’d you move here?
Let me guess: Because it’s the place where everyone wants to move to.
November 18th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Great job and adventure. I will move back to NJ. I have a house on the shore to go back to.