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April 8, 2015 8:53 AM

I'm moving to New Brunswick, NJ or somewhere in that area this coming summer and plan to be living there for the foreseeable future. Help!

I'm starting a job as a professor at Rutgers on the New Brunswick campus this coming fall (hooray!) and I'd like to find a good place to live that is:

- Not too far from work (25 or 30 minute drive, tops, to the Rutgers New Brunswick campus)
- In a safe neighborhood - this is REALLY important to me
- Cat-friendly (I have one cat)
- Has a parking spot for my car
- Has a washer, dryer, and dishwasher in the unit
- Is quiet
- Ideally has 2 bedrooms so that I can have a home office

Ideally, I'd like to live in a standalone house, but I don't know if that's going to happen this time - I'm moving from North Carolina and I can't just look at houses as they come available. I'm also happy to live in a clean and quiet apartment complex, a duplex, a condo, a townhouse. I'm pretty flexible there. I do not want to live in a high rise or in a big building with a bunch of units in it - a place that has like, eight or ten units per building is OK though.

I am going up this coming weekend (in two days!) to look at places. I have a few places lined up but I'm having a hard time because I don't know the area. Anyone have any tips about how to find a good place to live in the New Brunswick area? Areas to avoid? Areas to target? Places to see while I'm in town? I'm coming back again in May so if this ends up being a scouting mission that's fine - ideas of places to scout specifically would also be helpful.

I'm happy to work directly with an agent or broker and to pay a commission if you have a good recommendation. I'm not looking to buy at this time, but some agents also offer rental properties.

Thanks!

posted by k8lin to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

Response by poster: Also I've scoured Zillow, PadMapper, Craigslist - general tips on househunting aren't what I'm looking for - I'm looking for New Brunswick/Highland Park/Somerset/Edison specific advice. Thanks!
posted by k8lin at 8:55 AM on April 8, 2015

Highland Park is the standby for professors and grad students. It's got a lovely small-town vibe and it's smack-dab near lots of major highways and transportation. I also live there, so I might be biased. :) I found my gem of an apartment on Craigslist. You have to act fast, though, and stay on top of listings, because they go quickly.

There are a few nearby apartment complexes and garden apartments that are okay, but many of them are on the run-down side. You can generally find reviews online by searching the name of the complex, i.e. 'Oakwood Estates' etc.

Generally good areas: Highland Park, North Brunswick, Princeton, East Brunswick

Mixed to not so great: Franklin Twp, Somerset, Edison, New Brunswick

Places to go/see: Rutgers Gardens, Grounds for Sculpture, just walking around Princeton, Sandy Hook. Tons and tons of great food in Central NJ, especially if you dig international flavors. MeMail me if you wanna get more in-depth!
posted by rachaelfaith at 9:06 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

One more tip: Try finding towns you want to check out by their proximity to an NJ transit station on the Northeast Corridor line. The New Brunswick stop is a few blocks away from the Rutgers College Ave campus and that could be an easy commute for you. Oh, Metuchen is lovely, too!
posted by rachaelfaith at 9:13 AM on April 8, 2015

I live in New Brunswick and agree with rachaelfaith. Live in Highland Park: quiet, safe, full of professors, grad students, and families. You can bike to any Rutgers campus, and walk to the train station downtown (may be a bit far depending on where in HP you end up).

A lot of the apartment stock in HP is converted houses or "garden style" complexes, and an in-unit washer/dryer may be hard to find, just FYI.
posted by baby beluga at 9:19 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Highland Park is great if you want to be close. It's hard to beat its small-town vibe, since much of the surrounding area is suburban. Princeton will be very pricey, and traffic between Princeton and New Brunswick will not be pleasant. Milltown, in North Brunswick, has a small town center, although I don't know about safety. Bound Brook, up the river from New Brunswick, has a larger town center, although I again can't comment on safety. If you consider living on the train line and taking a train to New Brunswick, keep in mind that going to a campus other than College Ave could cost you considerable time on the campus bus system, particularly at rush hour.
posted by mollweide at 10:53 AM on April 8, 2015

I lived in New Brunswick just across from the Rutgers campus. I worked with a fellow called Louis Barood who was a really great landlord to me. Louis has since died, but his sons are in the real estate business. You might try seeing what their agency can offer you. Good luck.
posted by effluvia at 11:41 AM on April 8, 2015

Which campus in particular? It's about a 15 minute drive between the farthest reaches of Busch and Cook, which matters if you are aiming at a 25 minute commute.
posted by smackfu at 11:43 AM on April 8, 2015

+1 on Highland Park. Even though I'm a number of years removed from my time at Rutgers, many of the professors and grad students who I knew personally lived over there. I seem to remember some nicer housing in New Brunswick toward Buccleuch Park, too, but not sure about what kind of crowd lives there.

Which campus will you be on most of the time? Echoing mollweide and smackfu, transit between campus can take a very long time (especially during rush hour and certain times mid-day - and smackfu's suggestion of a 15 min from one campus to another might be an underestimate, especially if you're taking the campus bus), so take that into consideration, too.
posted by scottso17 at 12:25 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I went to grad school at Rutgers and lived in Highland Park - it was great, and I definitely recommend it. It's nice because it's mostly grad students and professors, and it also has a heavy orthodox jewish population, which means that it's an actual walkable suburb (because they have to walk to temple on Fridays). Pretty much no undergrads live there, so you won't run into your students. And the Rite Aid in town doubles as an incredible liquor store. I had a washer/dryer in my basement on a grad student salary, so you should get one no problem. A lot of the houses around don't actually have driveways/parking spots, but I also never ever had a problem finding street parking. You shouldn't have to go through a broker - I didn't. If you're looking at places before you show up, it's organized around a numbered system, where higher numbers are farther away from Rutgers. The N and S version of the same street are divided by the main downtown.


Just don't live in the apartment complex on S 3rd and Benner - my friend lived there and the management company was a big problem.

Also, you didn't ask this, but go to Edison for all manner of asian food, and go by the Metropark stop for Indian food. I don't know if the Edison Diner is actually good or not, because it's so wrapped up in nostalgia for me that I can't judge it objectively, but I spent an unreasonable amount of time there.
posted by Ragged Richard at 5:53 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks guys! Ragged Richard, I ended up at the Edison Diner and yes, it is objectively good. :) I actually forgot that it was recommended to me here and just happened to pop in. It was excellent.

I found a great place on Craigslist that is about a 15 or 20 minute drive with traffic to my campus (the College Ave campus - sorry; I thought that it was called the "New Brunswick campus" for some reason). I got very lucky and was the first person to get in touch with the owner, who happened to be showing it while I was in town, and it has everything I was looking for. I signed the lease and am all set.

Thanks for all of the help here. I really loved the area, and although I'm sad to leave my current digs (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) I think I'm going to enjoy New Brunswick and the surrounding area quite a bit.
posted by k8lin at 9:43 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]