Author: Brett

We did not take the house in Westfield, NJ.

We had eventually agreed on a price, after the owners left us hanging all week. In turn, we left them cooling their heels while we called the town’s tax offices and made sure that their many renovations would neither raise our taxes nor cause the new additions to be ripped out due to a lack of permits (Shh! they had filed for some, but not all).

We weren’t sure why a house this good was sitting for so long. Sure, it was overpriced, but maybe there was something more? We checked out Property Shark and discovered that the current owners had purchased the property in July of ’06, but were already putting it back on the market in June of 2007. Suddenly, the house seemed like the one empty seat on a packed subway train—you slide into it before thinking—only to discover the big wad of gum that’s been stuck to it the entire time. Still, we did our homework and couldn’t find anything wrong.

Were we just stressed because the agent was pushing us to sign the contract before a second look? But in the end, the queasy feeling that Andrew had about living in New Jersey or about the commute (he had to transfer at Newark), or whatever it was that gave him that pit in his stomach took over.

Andrew wanted my opinion—what should we do? This was the third house that we had tried to buy in Westfield, and each time we thought we might get it, Andrew got that sinking feeling. Should I be like my mother had been to my father and guilt him into it? After all, I’ll be the one spending my days lugging laundry baskets up and down the stairs in that house, stocking up on teething biscuits and Pringles in town, and pushing our SUV-like double stroller up and down the sidewalks while he’ll be clicking the mouse in his mid-town Manhattan office 5 days a week, 9:00-5:30. As long as he has his plasma in his media room, he’ll be just fine, right?

Well, I just could not. Call it evolution. In my mind, it didn’t matter that I could have lived there. If both of us weren’t crazy about the venture, I assume it just won’t work. This, by the way, must be the definition of love. Either that or stupidity.

The kicker was that Andrew’s mother and brother also admitted that they did not want us to move to Westfield, NJ either. Guess the joke has been on me. Yes, they are a proud, but stubborn people, these Brooklynites.

So, we are benched once again. We know that we cannot afford a single family detached house in the boros, at least not one that doesn’t need a lot of work, so we thought that our next step would be to take a look at some 3 bedroom apartments. The hope is that the commute would be easier on Andrew and maybe we could avoid the 10k suburban tax bill each year.

Our first stop is Greenpoint, Brooklyn where we’ll check out some of the new constructions in the area.

Author: Brett

Andrew and I have employed a couple of methods over the years in order to pinpoint the town that is right for us. Some of them are zany, like looking up the area where a certain film was shot because we liked the street or studying the train map and researching the towns within an hour’s ride from Manhattan. Then there are the times when we hear about a place through word of mouth. That’s how we discovered Cranford, NJ.

One day, I was complaining to a coworker about how long we have been looking for a house in a town with a vibrant downtown area and that we would like said house to be no more than a 20-minute walk to the train station. She mentioned that her best friend lived in Cranford in Union county, New Jersey and that it seemed to have what we were looking for.Continue reading Affordable Burb: Cranford, NJ