Do you and your wife have a driver's license and will you have a car in NJ? The answer to this will heavily dictate where you should live since a lot of central and southern NJ is suburban with public transit more geared towards serving commuters going to NYC and not generally setup well for trips around town.

For working in Rahway, recommend taking a look at the surrounding towns that are a bit nicer like Metuchen, Edison, Highland Park, Cranford, and Westfield. Really depends on what your salary and monthly expenses are.

Zillow.com is a decent resource for house hunting (both rentals and sales) and they give some estimates for taxes and other fees as well.