17. Neighborhood Profiles

The key points

• Paramus has no official neighborhood map. Names such as Ridge Ranch, Arcola, Dunkerhook and "the east side" are not fixed attributes of an address, so this section uses areas with stated road boundaries.²⁴⁴
• The age of the house matters more than the area. In 2025 and 2026 older houses sold at a median of $958,000 to $1,070,000 in each of the six areas, and new houses at $2,150,000 to $2,300,000 wherever there were enough sales to report.²⁴⁵
• Rebuilding is heaviest in the Ridge Ranch area. It holds 24 percent of the Borough's single-family houses and 37 percent of those built in 2015 or later.²⁴⁶
• Assessments track sale prices evenly. The 2026 assessment runs 86 to 90 percent of the 2025 to 2026 sale price in each of the six areas.^246, 245
• School assignment goes by address, not by area name. Confirm it with the district before you sign a contract.²⁴⁷

How the areas are drawn

The first six areas follow the Borough's six census tracts, which are printed on every parcel in the tax list, and the seventh, Ridge Ranch, follows the roads residents use for it.^244, 246 Two roads do most of the dividing. Route 17 splits the Borough west from east, and Midland Avenue, Century Road and East Ridgewood Avenue split it south to north. The Garden State Parkway and Route 4 matter for noise and access (Sections 12 and 16) but are not dividing lines here. The bounding roads given for each area are approximate. Read each as "roughly bounded by". The Ridge Ranch area overlaps three of the six areas, so its houses are counted in those rows as well.

The areas side by side

Table 17.1. The single-family houses in each area, 2026 tax list.²⁴⁶

Table 17.2. What sold in each area, January 1, 2025 through October 2, 2026.²⁴⁵

Of the 380 Borough sales, 369 are placed in one of the six areas. The fewer the sales in a row, the less weight its median can carry; South of Century Road, with 24, has the fewest.

Table 17.3. Teardown purchases and new-home sales in each area, January 2020 through June 2026.²⁴⁸

A "teardown purchase" is defined in Section 2. A "new-home sale" is a sale at $1 million or more of a house built in 2019 or later that is not itself a teardown purchase. Purchases made in late 2025 and 2026 are undercounted because the replacement house is not yet on the tax list.

What the tables say together

The median in each area is set by the mix of old and new houses, not by the address. In 2025 and 2026 the older houses sold for nearly the same median in five of the six areas: $958,000 in the southeast, $977,500 in the east, $993,000 in the northwest, $990,350 in the northeast and $970,000 south of Century Road. The area between Century Road and Midland Avenue was a step higher at $1,070,000. New construction sold between $2,150,000 and $2,300,000 wherever there were enough sales to report.²⁴⁵ The east area's $1,300,000 median is the highest in Table 17.2 because one sale in three there was a new house, not because its older houses cost more.

Assessments track sale prices evenly across town. The 2026 assessment runs 86 to 90 percent of the 2025 to 2026 sale price in each of the six areas.^246, 245 That is what annual reassessment (Section 9) is supposed to produce, and it means no part of Paramus is carrying a hidden tax adjustment relative to another.

What this means for you
Do not pay a premium for an area or a name. Price the house against its own type, old or new, anywhere in the Borough.

The six areas

Southeast (421.01). Farview Avenue on the west, Haase Avenue and Spring Valley Road on the north, Century Road and Howland Avenue on the south, and the Borough's eastern line at River Edge and Oradell. Streets include Terhune Avenue, Burlington Road, Lawrence Drive and Hickory Avenue. It has the oldest and smallest single-family houses in the Borough (median year built 1953, median living area 2,057 square feet) and the only R-50 zoning in town: 167 parcels on 50-foot frontages. Its median 2026 assessment, $756,700, is the lowest of the six. The median sale closed at 98.8 percent of asking in 29 days.^246, 245

East, Farview Avenue to the Oradell line (421.02). Farview Avenue on the west, East Ridgewood Avenue on the north, Haase Avenue and then Spring Valley Road on the south and southeast, and the Borough's eastern line. East Midland Avenue runs through the middle. Streets include McKinley Boulevard, Concord Drive, Bullard Avenue and Seton Hall Drive. It is the largest single-family area (1,453 parcels), 82 percent R-75. It has the highest count and share of houses built in 2015 or later (130, or 8.9 percent) and leads in teardown purchases (53) and new-home sales (61) since 2020.^246, 248

Northwest (423.01). Route 17 on the east, West Midland Avenue on the south, and the Borough's western and northern lines. Streets include Roosevelt Boulevard, Birchwood Road, Green Valley Road and West Ridgewood Avenue. Thirty-six percent of its houses are in R-100, the highest large-lot share of the six, and the median lot is 0.273 acres. Its median 2026 assessment, $849,800, is the highest of the six. It has 20 teardown purchases since 2020, fewer than any area but South of Century Road, and its new-home median of $1,557,500 is the lowest of the areas with enough sales to report.^246, 248

Northeast (423.02). Route 17 on the west, East Midland Avenue and then East Ridgewood Avenue on the south, and the Borough's northern and eastern lines. Streets include Pascack Road, Oradell Avenue, Arbor Road and Georgian Drive. Zoning is 57 percent R-75, 35 percent R-100 and 8 percent RML (120 houses). Only 5.2 percent of houses date from 2015 or later, the second-lowest share, yet 43 teardown purchases have closed here since 2020, the second-highest count, at the highest median price paid ($710,000). Older houses here sold at a median of 104.2 percent of asking, the highest figure in the Borough.^{246, 245, 248}

Century Road to Midland Avenue (424). Century Road on the south, Midland Avenue on the north, Farview Avenue on the east, and the Borough's western line at the Saddle River. Route 17 and the Garden State Parkway both run through it. Streets include Lockwood Drive, Wedgewood Drive and Valley View Avenue east of Route 17, and Morningside Road, Dunkerhook Road and part of Paramus Road west of it. Median year built is 1955, the second oldest of the six. Older houses here sold at a median of $1,070,000, about $80,000 to $110,000 above the other areas, and there have been 38 teardown purchases since 2020.^{246, 245, 248}

South of Century Road (425). Century Road and Howland Avenue on the north and the Borough's southern line, the full width of the Borough. Route 4, Route 17 and the Garden State Parkway all cross it. Streets include Arcola Avenue, Brookfield Avenue, Knollwood Drive and Alpine Drive. It holds every condominium and townhouse parcel on the Borough tax list (238) and every two-family parcel (112). It has the fewest single-family parcels (948), the lowest share built since 2015 (3.8 percent) and the fewest teardown purchases (13 since 2020). The median single-family sale closed at 99.3 percent of asking in 35 days.^{246, 245, 248}

What this means for you
If you want a townhouse or a two-family, most of the supply is south of Century Road. Check the specific street there against the highway and retail traffic in Section 12 and the pipeline in Section 13. About 1,190 of the roughly 2,100 units approved or under way are at the Route 4 and Route 17 interchange at the south end of the Borough.

The Ridge Ranch area

Residents use "Ridge Ranch" for the area bounded by Midland Avenue on the north, Forest Avenue on the east, Century Road on the south and Route 17 on the west. Century Road ends at Spring Valley Road, so the southeast corner follows Spring Valley Road up to Forest Avenue. The area contains 1,857 single-family parcels, 24 percent of the Borough's single-family houses, and 97.5 percent of them are zoned R-75.²⁴⁶ The median lot is 0.230 acres, against 0.267 acres in the rest of Paramus.

This is where new construction is most concentrated:

• New houses. The area holds 37 percent of the Borough's houses built in 2015 or later (198 of 528). The share is higher east of Farview Avenue (13.0 percent) than west of it (7.7 percent). One house in nine in the area is now less than twelve years old.²⁴⁶
• Teardowns. Eighty of the Borough's 206 teardown purchases since 2020 (39 percent) and 93 of its 208 new-home sales (45 percent) are inside this boundary.²⁴⁸
• Prices paid by builders. The median a builder paid for the old house rose from $522,100 in 2020 to $802,500 in 2024. The median finished house rose from $1,390,000 in 2020 to $2,200,000 in 2025.²⁴⁸
• Old and new sell differently. The 2025 to 2026 median of $1,255,000 is a blend. Houses built in 2019 or later sold at a median of $2,262,500, at 98.2 percent of asking, in 40.5 days. Older houses sold at a median of $999,999, at 100.0 percent of asking, in 21.5 days, in line with the rest of the Borough.²⁴⁵

What this means for you
If you own an original house on a 75-foot lot in this area, the floor under your price is what a builder will pay for the lot, and that floor rose about 54 percent in four years. If you are buying one to live in, you are competing with that same builder. If you are buying one of the new houses, there were 21 comparable new-home sales inside this boundary in 2025 alone. Section 2 shows how to use them, and Section 14 covers what the R-75 zone lets a builder put up.

Elementary school assignment

Paramus Public Schools operates five elementary schools through grade 4 (Memorial, Midland, Parkway, Ridge Ranch and Stony Lane), two grade 5 to 8 middle schools (East Brook and West Brook) and Paramus High School (Section 10).²⁴⁷ The district assigns schools one address at a time through the "Find My School" lookup on its registration page, so this report does not assign streets or areas to schools. For a specific address, use the lookup or call the district's central registration office (201-261-7800).²⁴⁷

What this means for you
Confirm the assigned elementary and middle school for a specific address with the district in writing before you sign a contract. Do not rely on the listing, on a consumer website's boundary map, or on the name of the area.

What I tell my buyers: in Paramus the name of the area tells you less than the year the house was built. An original 1950s house sold for about $1 million in 2025 and 2026 almost everywhere in town, and a new one for about $2.2 million almost everywhere in town. So I price the house against its own kind first, and then I look at the block: how many lots on it have already been rebuilt, and how many are likely to be.