What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Median real estate price in the Town Center of Hillside is $498,389, which is more expensive than 37.8% of the neighborhoods in New Jersey and 66.0% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Hillside Town Center is currently $3,130, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 53.8% of New Jersey neighborhoods.
Hillside Town Center is a suburban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Hillside, New Jersey.
Real estate in the Town Center of Hillside, NJ is primarily made up of medium sized (three or four bedroom) to small (studio to two bedroom) small apartment buildings and single-family homes. Most of the residential real estate is occupied by a mixture of owners and renters. Many of the residences in the Town Center neighborhood are older, well-established, built between 1940 and 1969. A number of residences were also built before 1940.
Real estate vacancies in Hillside Town Center are 4.5%, which is lower than one will find in 70.0% of American neighborhoods. Demand for real estate in Hillside Town Center is above average for the U.S., and may signal some demand for either price increases or new construction of residential product for this neighborhood.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Hillside, the Town Center neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
Three-deckers, duplexes, old Victorian homes cut up into apartments. Independent stores on the corner selling pizza. These are some of the hallmarks of neighborhoods with lots of small 2, 3, and 4 unit apartment buildings. The Hillside Town Center neighborhood really stands out in this regard, however, as it is dominated by such small apartment buildings more than nearly any other neighborhood in America. This is a stunning visual and lifestyle example of this type of neighborhood. In fact, 61.5% of the real estate here are small 2, 3, or 4 unit apartment buildings, which is a higher proportion than found in 99.3% of America's neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the Hillside Town Center neighborhood has more Haitian and Jamaican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 17.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Haitian ancestry and 10.6% have Jamaican ancestry.
Hillside Town Center is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 15.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak French at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the Town Center neighborhood in Hillside are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 51.1% of the neighborhoods in America. With 14.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 59.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the Hillside Town Center neighborhood, 28.2% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 25.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (25.1%), and 19.2% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the Hillside Town Center neighborhood is English, spoken by 57.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, French, African languages and Portuguese.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the Town Center neighborhood in Hillside, NJ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Haitian (17.7%). There are also a number of people of Jamaican ancestry (10.6%), and residents who report South American roots (6.3%), and some of the residents are also of Puerto Rican ancestry (5.2%), along with some Portuguese ancestry residents (4.1%), among others. In addition, 33.1% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in Hillside Town Center neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.9% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (76.0%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (8.3%) and 7.8% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
