Hanover Township, NJ: ‘A fun, family-oriented place’

USA

Tired of the scorching weather and the constant threat of wildfires, Andrew and Carolyn Trexler decided early this year it was time to end their five-year experiment to live in Northern California. So they left to return to their home port of North Jersey. The only problem was securing a home in a very competitive market.

After months of looking online and watching homes come on the market and disappear within days, the Trexlers and their two children, 11 and 14, took a weekend trip back east in early May. They looked at 10 houses and bid – well above the asking price – on four. Each time they were outbid.

“It’s such an emotional rollercoaster, wondering how much you’re asking to provide, only to be told you’re number 2,” says Mr Trexler, 46, a cardiac nurse who took a new job at St. Clare’s Denville Hospital, in Denville, NJ, with a June start date. “We got to the point where we thought we would just rent for a year and see if the inventory went up or the interest went down. We were desperate.”

Then they were told that the highest bid on a home they had bid for in Hanover Township had fallen through, and that their second-place bid—$60,000 over the asking price of $610,000—was now sufficient. In mid-June, they closed the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath split-level on 3 acres, and signed up for Hanover’s Bee Meadow Pool, library cards, and new driver’s licenses a few days later. Their heads are still turning.

“Climatically and culturally, I just didn’t see us rooting permanently in California,” says Mr. Trexler, who grew up in nearby Summit, NJ (Ms. Trexler, 46, grew up in East Hanover.) So easy to recreate. assimilate into what we had before. Our old friends were so hospitable.”

Those same friends, he said, “thought we were crazy to move, and even crazier to come back, especially in this day and age when the market is so tough.”

While many North Jersey suburbs are experiencing a tightening market, with shrinking supplies and growing demand, Hanover is really feeling the pinch. This Morris County township of about 15,000 has top-rated schools and some of the lowest property taxes in the area – and many buyers are scrambling to find a home there.

“I tell my buyers that if you want this house, make yourself as attractive as possible,” says Elizabeth Harper, a real estate agent at Keller Williams Metropolitan who has lived in Hanover for 41 years. “You have to give what you have and still be prepared for disappointment.”

For those already living in Hanover looking for more space, Ms. Harper has other advice: “People ask me, ‘Should I move or add something?’ I say, ‘Add – it’s a tough market.’”

When Ryan and Lauren Vanderhoef bought their three-bedroom home eight years ago, the market wasn’t nearly as challenging. With an asking price of less than $500,000, they were able to purchase a 1950s split level in a neighborhood less than a mile from Mrs. Vanderhoef’s job as a teacher at Hanover Park High School, and within walking distance of Progressive Gardens, the garden of the Vanderhoef family. center and landscaping in Cedar Knolls, NJ

Mr. Vanderhoef, 47, who grew up in Hanover, wanted to stay where he and Mrs. Vanderhoef started a family. “We love this city,” he said. “Our daughter is 5, and now we see her friends’ parents enter the store. It’s a fun, family-oriented place.”

What you will find

The 10.8-square-mile township is bisected by Interstate 287 and is divided into two communities: Whippany, east of the highway, and Cedar Knolls, to the west. Those are the names most residents use when asked where they live.

Most of the larger parks are in Whippany, where homes and lots are also somewhat larger. Still, Hanover’s housing is relatively homogeneous, consisting of split-level homes, homes with raised ranches, and extensive Cape Cods, most built between the 1950s and 1970s, with a few pockets of newer homes and a few townhouses and apartment complexes.

“You don’t see big properties in Hanover, and you don’t get anything new here,” said Ryan Bruen, 36, a real estate agent at Coldwell Banker. “When you move to Hanover, you kind of know what you’re going to get.”

Most commercial activity takes place along Whippany Road and busy Route 10, where large retail chains mingle with office parks owned by housing corporations such as MetLife and Bayer. But like many New Jersey suburban communities that expanded after World War II, Hanover has no city center. In 2019, the council wanted to change that by repurposing a former paper mill site along the Whippany River to create River Park Town Center.

Upon completion, the 88-acre site will have 11 residential buildings with 967 residential units; 80,000 square feet of retail space; an amphitheatre; and an extension of the Patriots’ path along the river. The first 81 luxury apartments, in a building called 34 Eden, will open this summer, said Kurt Vierheilig, DMR Architects’ design director, who was responsible for the design, and completion is expected to take four years.

What you pay

As of mid-June, there were 14 homes for sale in Hanover, from a two-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse for $385,000 to three new homes for about $1.4 million each. With such scarce inventory, buyers usually bid significantly more than the asking price, said Ms. Harper of Keller Williams Metropolitan, who recently sold a five-bedroom, four-bathroom home for $1.335 million — $110,000 above the asking price.

The average sale price this year, through the end of May, was $616,812, according to the Garden State Multiple Listing Service — up from $575,656 in the same five-month period in 2022.

Rents for apartments in complexes such as Woodmont Knolls and Sterling Parc, in Cedar Knolls or Whippany Village run from about $2,600 per month for one bedroom to $4,000 per month for two bedrooms.

The atmosphere

In the summer, be sure to check out Bee Meadow Pool, a large community swimming complex in the 89-acre Bee Meadow Park, featuring waterslides, table games and a booth. Seasonal memberships for 2023 Hanover residents start at $294 for singles or $451 for families; non-residents pay higher rates. In the winter, visitors in pajamas descend on the Whippany Railway Museum to take a ride on the Polar Express and meet Santa Claus; other trips in the historic train carriages are offered throughout the year.

Hanover has a handful of restaurants, but younger residents seeking a more active nightlife head to the bustling center of neighboring Morristown. Ashley Haynes, 24, a nurse at Morristown Medical Center, shares a two-bedroom apartment in Hanover with her brother that their parents bought for $350,000 two years ago. Going to Morristown at night to meet her friends would cost an Uber ride of about $10, she said, but she’s happy to live “in a little bit more of a suburb, where it’s quieter and cleaner, and I really what nature can see.”

The schools

Hanover Township has three elementary schools, each with approximately 230 to 300 students: Bee Meadow School, Mountview Road School, and Salem Drive School. Approximately 475 students in sixth through eighth grades attend Memorial Junior School, and 610 students are enrolled at Whippany Park High School, where more than 60 percent of students take one or more of the college’s 26 Advanced Placement courses. school follows.

Average SAT scores in 2021-22 were 561 in reading and writing and 557 in math, compared to state averages of 538 and 532. The high school has a highly regarded performing arts program and a marching band, and a choir that performs at Carnegie Hall.

Private school options include the Morristown Beard School, for students in sixth through twelfth grades, and the Academy of Saint Elizabeth, a preparatory high school in Florham Park, and the oldest all-female high school in New Jersey.

The commute

Hanover is located about 30 miles west of New York City and is connected by several major highways.

New Jersey Transit offers direct train service to Penn Station in Manhattan from Convent Station in Morris Township, a few miles south; trips last 55 to 65 minutes and cost $12.25 one way or $353 for a monthly pass.

New Jersey Transit’s No. 73 bus stops along Route 10 in Whippany and takes passengers to Newark, where they change to No. 108 and continue to Port Authority. The entire ride takes about two hours and costs $9.80 one way or $251 per month.

The history

Part of the first television broadcast originated in Whippany. On April 7, 1927, a speech by Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, was transmitted from Washington DC to the Bell Laboratories Building in New York City; immediately afterwards, a vaudeville comedian’s performance filmed at Bell Laboratories’ Whippany studios was transferred to the company’s New York offices. The next day, a front page story in The New York Times proclaimed, “It was as if a picture had suddenly come to life and started talking, smiling, nodding its head and looking this way.”