Our family of 5 moved from NYC to West Orange in early 2019. We really like it so far. The elementary and middle schools have been great, with a lot of support for advanced learners. The town itself is very diverse. My commute to Penn is: 7 minute drive to Orange station, 5 minute wait, ~ 25 minute train ride to Penn. We got lucky purchasing before the pandemic, and the family we bought from were in a hurry to leave. So our 4 bedroom / 2 bathroom was in the low $400k’s, is almost $150k more now (according to Zillow) - would have been out of our budget. Taxes are high - $14k - but we’re all happy with the schools.

We had a great realtor who helped us look at places. But honestly, the good schools x budget x commute to NYC, back in late 2018, had basically ~ 20 houses on the market in total. So scouting all the houses took three weekends in total.