14. Neighborhood Profiles

The problem with neighborhood names

Ridgewood has no official neighborhood map. The Village’s zoning ordinance, Master Plan and tax maps do not adopt neighborhood boundaries, and the names in common use (Upper Ridgewood, the Heights, the Lawns, Willard, Somerville, Travell) are a mix of historic subdivision names and elementary school attendance areas. Listing sites print them as if they were fixed attributes of an address. They are not, and a report that promises verifiable figures cannot build tables on them.

What can be verified is the Census tract. Ridgewood is covered by exactly five 2020 census tracts (471 through 475), which nest inside the Village boundary with no spillover; their 2020 populations sum to the Village count of 25,979.¹⁸⁵ Every deed record in the county file carries a tract code. This section therefore profiles the Village by tract, names the streets that fall in each so the reader can locate them, and joins two independent primary sources: the Census (population, tenure, owner-reported value, median year built) and the Bergen County deed record for January 2021 through August 2026 (what actually sold, for how much, on what lot, built when).¹⁸⁶¹⁸⁷

The tract is a statistical unit, not a market. Where a tract straddles two very different housing types, the tables say so.

The five tracts at a glance

Table 14.1. Census profile by tract. ACS 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates unless noted; as of September 7, 2026.¹⁸⁸

Table 14.2. Deed record by tract, residential sales at $100,000 and above with a usable sale code, January 2021 through August 2026. Analysis by Ashish Desai Group from Bergen County deed records (NJ Property Records export). As of September 7, 2026.¹⁸⁹

Price per square foot uses the assessor’s building area. “Assessment as % of price” is the current-roll assessment divided by the 2025 to 2026 sale price, the Section 2 calculation; the certified 2026 Village ratio is 60.52%. Tract 474 includes the downtown condominium and apartment stock, which lowers its medians; see the tract note.

The two tables agree with each other and disagree with the listing-site version of Ridgewood in one important way. Owner-reported values (Census) run 25 to 40 percent below what buyers paid in 2025 and 2026 in every tract. The gap is smallest in tract 473 and largest in tracts 471 and 475. That gap is the revaluation exposure described in Section 2, and it is not evenly distributed.

Tract 473: west of the tracks, north of West Ridgewood Avenue

Streets in the deed record: Highland Avenue, Knollwood Road, Mountain Avenue, Orchard Place (upper), West Ridgewood Avenue, Westend Avenue, Melrose Place, North Monroe Street (upper), Gardner Road, North Murray Avenue, Monte Vista Avenue, Lincoln Avenue, Beechwood Road, Heights Road.¹⁹⁰ This is the area listings call Upper Ridgewood and the Heights.

Smallest tract by population (3,287), highest owner share (96.9%), oldest stock (median year built 1939 or earlier per Census; 1930 in the deed record, with 45 percent of sales built before 1930). Ninety-two percent of sales are in the large-lot zones (R-1, R-110, R-125), and the median lot is 0.42 acres, double the Village figure. Median sale 2021 to 2026: $1,560,000; 2025 to 2026: $2,000,000. This is where the $2.5 million-and-above segment described in Sections 3 and 5 mostly lives, and its slower days-on-market figures apply here more than anywhere else.

Assessment against price runs 54.6 percent, the closest to the 60.52 ratio of the five tracts. Homes here have drifted least; the revaluation should move this tract’s share less than the others’.

Tract 472: west side, Hillcrest and the Heights slope

Streets in the deed record: Hillcrest Road, Upper Boulevard, North Monroe Street, Alpine Terrace, Summit Street, Hamilton Road, Morningside Road, Glenwood Road, Beveridge Road, Sherwood Road, Heights Road, Shelbourne Terrace, Phelps Road, Fairmount Road.¹⁹¹ Willard School (601 Morningside Road) sits in this tract.

Population 4,481; owner share 90.6%. Sixty-nine percent of sales are in R-1 or larger zones; median lot 0.28 acres. Median year built 1943 (Census) and 1940 (sales). Median sale 2021 to 2026: $1,195,000; 2025 to 2026: $1,380,000. The 2025 to 2026 median puts this tract in the $1.2 million to $1.8 million band, which Section 3 shows selling at 112.6 percent of asking with competition 86 percent of the time.

Assessment against price: 49.7 percent, the lowest of the five. Buyers here since 2025 are, on the median, assessed at half of what they paid. Section 2’s arithmetic falls hardest on this tract.

Tract 472 also contains the largest cluster of repeat sales at 1.8x or more (Section 11): Hillcrest, Beveridge, Shelbourne, Sherwood and Glenwood all appear in that list. The 1950s and 1960s houses on these streets are the teardown inventory.

Tract 471: north and east, Glen Avenue to the Ho-Ho-Kus line

Streets in the deed record: East Glen Avenue, North Pleasant Avenue, Walthery Avenue (north), Northern Parkway, Fairfield Avenue, Bogert Avenue, Barnett Place, Eastbrook Road, Van Emburgh Avenue, Steilen Avenue, Cambridge Road, Roslyn Road, Van Buren Street, North Maple Avenue (north).¹⁹² Travell School (340 Bogert Avenue), Graydon Pool and the Village Hall complex are in or at the edge of this tract; the Ho-Ho-Kus Brook corridor and the Saddle River corridor (Section 12) both touch it.

Largest tract by sales volume (321) and second largest by population (6,135). Owner share 94.6%. Two-thirds of sales are R-2; 55 percent of what sold was built in 1950 or later, the highest post-war share in the Village. Median lot 0.24 acres. Median sale 2021 to 2026: $855,000; 2025 to 2026: $931,000. This is the core of the $800,000 to $1.2 million band, the most competitive product in the Village by Section 3’s measure (111.1 percent of asking, 85 percent sold above ask).

Assessment against price: 50.9 percent. The Census median year built (1954) and the post-war share identify this as the cape-and-split-level tract; Section 12’s 1940s to 1950s inspection list (asbestos siding, 60-amp service, oil-to-gas conversions with a tank left in the ground) applies here first.

Tract 475: east and south, Ridgewood Avenue to the Paramus and Glen Rock lines

Streets in the deed record: East Ridgewood Avenue, Pershing Avenue, Berkshire Road, Spring Avenue, Brookside Avenue, Linwood Avenue, Stevens Avenue, South Irving Street, Grove Street, Kenilworth Road, Walthery Avenue (south), Laurel Road, Alanon Road, South Pleasant Avenue.¹⁹³ Hawes School (531 Stevens Avenue), Somerville School (45 South Pleasant Avenue) and the Duck Pond (Saddle River County Park) are in this tract; the Saddle River runs its eastern edge, and the Kenilworth Road and Grove Street reaches are in the corridor Section 12 describes.

Largest tract by population (6,918) and by owner households (1,860). Owner share 90.0%. Seventy-seven percent of sales are R-2; median lot 0.21 acres, the smallest of the five owner tracts. Fifteen R-4 (garden apartment) sales are in this tract’s record. Median sale 2021 to 2026: $870,000; 2025 to 2026: $1,004,999. Price per square foot, $455, is the highest of the five tracts: smaller houses on smaller lots, priced at a premium per foot.

Assessment against price: 51.6 percent. Pershing Avenue, Berkshire Road, Brookside Avenue and Stevens Avenue account for nine of the 56 repeat sales at 1.8x or more in Section 11; this is the second teardown cluster.

Tract 474: downtown and the south-central blocks

Streets in the deed record: Doremus Avenue, Oak Street, South Maple Avenue, Woodside Avenue, Orchard Place (lower), Prospect Street, Garfield Place, Union Street, Hope Street, Lenox Avenue, Bellair Road, Spencer Place, Ethelbert Place, Washington Place.¹⁹⁴ Orchard School (230 Demarest Street), George Washington Middle School (155 Washington Place), the Central Business District, the train station, the four multifamily buildings described in Section 10 and the Chestnut Street C-R-1 district are all here.

This tract is two markets in one statistical unit. It holds 1,053 of the Village’s 1,556 renter households (68 percent), which is why its owner share is 50.6 percent against 90 percent or better everywhere else, and why its Census median value ($663,400, with a wide ±$167,483 margin) is the lowest. The single-family streets, by contrast, are the oldest in the Village: 63 percent of what sold was built before 1930, and the median year built of a sale is 1920. Thirty-seven percent of sales are in R-3, the only zone that permits a two-family house, and Section 11’s 50 by 100 R-3 arithmetic (1,750 square feet of gross building area, all floors) is the binding constraint on this tract’s lots.

Median sale 2021 to 2026: $895,560; 2025 to 2026: $994,600. Assessment against price: 51.4 percent. Absentee-owner purchases, where the deed record carries the flag, are 9 of 101 here against 3 to 14 of 115 to 157 elsewhere; the difference is small and the flag is incomplete, so it is reported and not interpreted.

The forward-looking item for this tract is Section 10. The February 2026 ordinances put 20 units per acre across the B-1 and B-2 districts, 24 on the west side of South Broad Street outside the historic district, and 30 on Chestnut Street. Every one of those parcels is in tract 474, and the residential streets that abut them (Marshall Street, Franklin Avenue, the lower ends of Oak and Union) are the ones whose surroundings can change inside a three-year holding period.

Elementary school assignment

The district assigns elementary and middle schools by street address; the street-to-school directory is held by the Registrar at the Education Center, 49 Cottage Place, .¹⁹⁵ Section 7 shows why the assignment should be treated as an assignment and not a guarantee: enrollment has fallen 16.7 percent at Travell and 10.3 percent at Benjamin Franklin over three years while Orchard and Somerville grew, which is the pattern that precedes a boundary review.¹⁹⁶†

What the analyst still owes this section

Three things would turn these profiles from tract statistics into neighborhood profiles. First, a boundary map: the Census Bureau’s 2020 tract reference sheet for Bergen County gives the bounding streets, and a one-page map with the five tracts, the six elementary schools, the station and the two flood corridors belongs at the head of this section.¹⁹⁷ Second, the NJMLS close-to-list and days-on-market figures by tract, which require geocoding the closed-sales file against the TIGER address-range file; the deed record does not carry list price. Third, PropStream owner-tenure and estimated-equity fields by tract, which the deed record approximates (Section 15 reports that 50.8 percent of Village owners have been in place since before 2010) but does not replace.†

What I tell my buyers: the name on the listing tells you which school the seller thinks you get and roughly where the house is. The tract tells you what the neighbors paid, how old the houses are, and how far the assessments have drifted. On the west side above Ridgewood Avenue, a 2025 buyer is assessed at half of what they paid. That is the number to put next to the school name.

† Figures marked with a dagger are best-effort research, so verify them with the issuing office (the Village of Ridgewood, the school district, the county, the state or the utility) before making judgment calls or decisions on them.