Belleville, N.J.: An Affordable Alternative to Renting in the City – The New York Times

Belleville, the blue-collar suburb adjoining Newark where Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — the original Jersey Boys — got their start, has long been a destination for first-time home buyers. The pandemic only heightened the township’s profile, especially among New Yorkers.

Last summer, more than 100 potential buyers descended on an open house at a nondescript, three-bedroom, aluminum-sided colonial. After multiple offers, the house sold for $331,000, more than 10 percent above asking. Since then, the market has remained robust, fueled by affordability and commutability.

Brian Maysonet, 38, a sales manager in the beverage industry, and Iliana Alvarado, 36, a law-firm office manager, arrived several months before the lockdown. They paid $310,000 for a three-bedroom, one-bathroom Cape Cod and invested $60,000 in renovations. For the couple and their two daughters, who previously lived in a railroad-style rental in Ridgewood, Queens, the road to Belleville was a process of elimination.

“We didn’t look in the five boroughs because it’s way too expensive, and we knew the taxes in Westchester were pretty high,” Mr. Maysonet said. “And because we work in Manhattan, we eliminated Long Island because of the commute.”

That left New Jersey. “We basically did our research on Zillow, started in Jersey City and worked our way west” to Essex County — Bloomfield and Montclair in particular, Mr. Maysonet said. But housing prices in those areas were out of their budget, putting the self-proclaimed “Cherry Blossom Capital of America” into play.

In Belleville, Ms. Alvarado said, the couple found a sense of familiarity because of similarities with Queens: shopping, schools and other necessities close by; a sizable Hispanic and Latino community (48 percent of the population); and the celebration of diversity. Especially welcome this year was their small street’s Juneteenth block party.

Louis Wnek, a 25-year resident and a sales associate with Weichert Realtors in Clifton, said nearly half of his Belleville buyers come from New York. “Rather than pay rent in the city,” he said, “they’re finding houses with a little bit of property and taxes that aren’t too crazy.”

Mr. Wnek added that the perception of Belleville, with 38,000 residents in a little more than three square miles, is changing to that of a place “with a lot to offer besides inexpensive homes.” He pointed to a $6 million project, currently underway, to resurface the athletic fields of the imposing Belleville Municipal Stadium and the planned refurbishment of the main commercial corridor. The township’s third supermarket, a Lidl, opened this month in a renovated strip mall, and its first Starbucks is being built near Clara Maass Medical Center.

Lured to Belleville in 2019 by a cousin living there, Christine David-Fortune, 44, a counselor at a Brooklyn charter school, and Stephen Fortune, 49, a customer service manager, bought a three-bedroom brick split-level for $370,000. Originally from Grenada, the couple and their teenage daughter arrived from a rental in a two-family house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and now grow okra, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant in their sunny backyard.

“We looked at 15 houses in Belleville, and when we first saw the one we bought, the man next door came out and said, ‘I’ll guess you’ll be our new neighbors,’” Ms. David-Fortune said. “I loved that. You don’t feel like a stranger here.”

Once a manufacturing hub, Belleville lies between the Passaic River and the Garden State Parkway, 12 miles from Manhattan. Newark is to the south, Nutley to the north, Bloomfield to the west, and North Arlington and Kearny to the east, across the river.

The township grows more suburban in character the greater the distance from Newark. Its southern panhandle, the historically Italian American Silver Lake area, has rowhouses, a light-rail station and a front-stoop ambience evocative of parts of Brooklyn. In the northwest corner, the postwar split-levels of Rutan Estates bring to mind Long Island. Most of Belleville’s housing stock, though, is older, with plenty of early 20th-century colonials, including multifamily homes, along with Cape Cods and condominiums — and hardly a McMansion in sight.

Rather than a traditional downtown, stores and small businesses line Washington Avenue — a four-lane thoroughfare — for two miles. Landmarks include a public library endowed by Andrew Carnegie, the stately funeral home where “The Sopranos” filmed its farewells and a giant motorcycle dealership.

Gabrielle Bennett-Meany, a 30-year resident, school board member and coordinator of local green initiatives like the community garden, dog run and street-corner planter boxes, described Belleville as a “diamond in the rough.”

“Urban with a suburban feel? Suburban with an urban feel? To me, it’s just quaint,” she said. “I like our smaller lot sizes, with people next to you but not on top of you, and that you know everybody on the street.”

New neighbors, likely younger professionals, are on the way. As with Harrison and Kearny, two other lower Passaic River towns with industrial heritages, Belleville has landed on developers’ radar. Several mixed-use, upscale apartment houses incorporating 1,200 rental units have been approved or are under construction. The first to reach completion, a 232-unit, transit-oriented complex across from the Silver Lake light-rail station — and which bears the neighborhood’s name — will see its first tenants in September.

Michael Melham, the mayor, said the township pivoted during the pandemic and is allowing developers to incorporate co-working space in place of a portion of their retail requirements.

Mr. Melham sees location as one of Belleville’s biggest draws. “We border the largest city in New Jersey,” he said. “And from our hilltops we can see New York City.”

Most single-family houses on the market fall in the $350,000 to $450,000 range, prices that appeal to the newly married and to young families outgrowing apartment life on the other side of the Hudson, said Carmen Jimenez, a broker-sales associate with Re/Max Professionals, in Belleville.

In mid-August, the New Jersey Multiple Listing Service’s website showed 32 single-family houses on the market, priced from $220,000 to $599,000.

From Aug. 1, 2020, to July 31, 2021, the median sale price of a single-family home was $365,000, based on 225 sales, according to the Multiple Listing Service. During the same period a year earlier, before the pandemic’s full effect on the suburban real estate market took hold, 170 single-family houses sold at a median of $325,000.

Belleville’s average property tax bill in 2020 was $10,347.

Although densely populated, Belleville has swaths of green. There is a county golf course with a popular youth instruction program, as well as part of a private golf course. The northern edge of Essex County’s Branch Brook Park, known for its springtime cherry blossoms, spills over from Newark, and the adjacent Belleville Park and many residential streets have their own abundance of the showy cherry trees. The blossoms are a point of civic pride and create a backdrop for pop-up yoga events.

The Whiskey Priest gastro pub is the newest addition to Belleville’s Italian- and Latin-influenced dining scene. Near the township’s geographic center is Michael’s Roscommon House, a sports bar with Irish and Italian fare. And at Belleville’s southern tip is the old school, wood-paneled, cash-only Belmont Tavern, which has been dishing up its vinegary Chicken Savoy for generations.

In a public school district that is 69 percent Hispanic, 13 percent white, 9 percent Asian and 8 percent Black, students attend one of seven numbered elementary schools through sixth grade and Belleville Middle School for seventh and eighth grades.

Belleville High School enrolls 1,400 and offers academies in engineering and the medical sciences and in criminal justice. Average SAT scores in 2019-2020 were 505 in reading and writing and 502 in math, versus 536 in each subject statewide.

Saint Peter School, part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, serves students in prekindergarten through eighth grade.

From the Silver Lake station of the Newark Light Rail, the ride to Newark Penn Station takes 18 minutes and costs $1.60 one way or $59 monthly. At Newark, riders can catch a PATH train to the World Trade Center (an 18-minute trip) or a New Jersey Transit train to Penn Station in Manhattan (a 20- to 25-minute ride). The PATH fare is $2.75 one way; the New Jersey Transit fare is $5.25 one way or $152 monthly.

Another option is a New Jersey Transit train from Bloomfield. The 30-to-40-minute trip costs $6.75 one way or $184 monthly.

DeCamp Bus Lines offers limited Belleville service. The ride to the Port Authority takes 35 minutes and costs $7.40 one way or $68.50 for 10 trips.

In 1870, a retired sea captain brought 68 Chinese men and boys from San Francisco to work at his steam laundry along the Passaic River. Many had helped build the Central Pacific Railroad at a time when Chinese immigrants faced discrimination on the West Coast. Belleville, originally named Second River, provided sanctuary, and its Chinatown helped to seed Manhattan’s. Members of the East Coast’s first Chinese community are memorialized by a pagoda-topped monument in the cemetery of the Belleville Dutch Reformed Church.

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