Four current sources put Maplewood’s typical home price in different places: Zillow’s home-value index shows $811,268 (up 2.2% over the past year), Redfin’s town-level figure shows $999,000 for March 2026, Redfin’s zip-code data shows $830,000 for December 2025 with a 23-day median time on market, and Movoto shows $799,000 for April 2026 sales against an $884,000 median list price in May. The gap exists because these track different things: an automated valuation model, a monthly sold-price median, and a listing-price median don’t measure the same event. Maplewood’s 2025 general property tax rate, certified by the state, is $2.401 per $100 of assessed value; on a home assessed at $900,000, that’s roughly $21,600 a year. Commute time to New York Penn Station runs 31 to 41 minutes depending on which Midtown Direct or express train you catch.
Where Maplewood Is and Who It Suits
Maplewood is an Essex County township of 25,684 residents as of the 2020 U.S. Census, bordering Newark to the east and Millburn to the west, sharing a school district with South Orange to the north. It sits on NJ Transit’s Morris & Essex line with direct Midtown Direct service to New York Penn Station, no Hoboken transfer required.
This page is built for four audiences with different questions: buyers who need to know what a home actually costs beyond the sticker price, sellers who need current competitiveness signals, investors evaluating appreciation and carrying costs, and agents who need a citable reference. It is not a renter’s guide.
Home Prices and Market Competitiveness Right Now
| Metric | Value | Source | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home value index | $811,268 (+2.2% YoY) | Zillow ZHVI | May 2026 |
| Town-level median sale price | $999,000 | Redfin | March 2026 |
| Zip 07040 median sale price / DOM | $830,000 / 23 days | Redfin | December 2025 |
| Median sold price / DOM | $799,000 / 16 days | Movoto | April 2026 |
Time on market runs 16 to 23 days across three of the four sources above, well under the roughly 42-day statewide median Redfin reports for New Jersey overall.
A named example from the most recent closings: 140 Oakview Ave sold for $1,183,754 against a $1,050,000 list price, 13% over ask, after 42 days on market, closing January 16, 2026, per Redfin’s public records data. That’s on the high end of what the current market supports for an updated single-family home. Not every listing sees that kind of bidding.
Do homes in Maplewood typically sell above or below asking? Recent closings vary widely, from roughly 6% to 21% over list price depending on condition and location, based on Redfin’s public sale records for zip 07040 in the past several months. There is no single typical spread published for the town as a whole.
Neighborhoods: What’s Actually Known, and What Isn’t
Maplewood is commonly divided into the walkable Village center near the train station and several outer residential sections, including areas known locally as College Hill and Upper Wyoming. What’s missing from every public source, including this one, is a sold-price breakdown by sub-area: no MLS report, county record, or index publishes Maplewood home prices split by neighborhood. Anyone citing a specific dollar figure for Village homes versus outer Maplewood homes is estimating, not reporting. If that distinction matters to your decision, the only reliable path is pulling comparable sales for the specific streets you’re considering through a licensed agent with live MLS access.
Property Taxes and the Real Cost of Owning
New Jersey taxes are calculated on assessed value, not market value, and the two frequently diverge because assessments aren’t updated every year the way sale prices move. Maplewood’s certified 2025 general tax rate is $2.401 per $100 of assessed value, according to the New Jersey Department of the Treasury’s official rate table. On a home assessed at $900,000, that works out to approximately $21,600 annually. Ownwell’s independent tracking of actual local bills puts Maplewood’s median effective rate at 3.53% and its median annual bill at $17,313, lower than the worked example above because it reflects the town’s actual median assessed value rather than a round $900,000 figure.
Schools
Maplewood’s public schools sit within the South Orange-Maplewood School District, an 11-school district serving roughly 6,800 to 7,100 students depending on the count year. SchoolDigger ranks the district 160th of 609 New Jersey districts, a 4-star rating, with real variation underneath that average: Tuscan Elementary School ranks 123rd of 1,347 elementary schools statewide at 5 stars, while Columbia High School, the district’s sole high school, posts a 91.3% four-year graduation rate. District-wide, New Jersey’s 2023–24 state assessments show 70% of students proficient in reading and 53% in math, per state testing data reported by Niche, figures that sit above the state average on reading and closer to it on math.
Which Maplewood elementary school has the strongest academic ranking? Tuscan Elementary School, ranked 123rd out of 1,347 New Jersey elementary schools and rated 5 stars by SchoolDigger, the highest rank among Maplewood’s public elementary schools in that dataset.
Commuting to NYC: What the Range Doesn’t Tell You
Most guides to Maplewood repeat a flat 30 to 45 minutes for the commute to Manhattan. That range hides a real spread between specific trains.
| Service | Departs Maplewood | Arrives NY Penn | Trip time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early Midtown Direct | 6:42 AM | 7:19 AM | 37 minutes |
| AM express | 6:57 AM | 7:28 AM | 31 minutes |
| Typical peak range (multiple trains) | varies | varies | 30 to 45 minutes |
| Off-peak / local | varies, lower frequency | varies | 45+ minutes, may require a transfer |
Both specific departure times above reflect a June 2026 schedule update reported by the local outlet Village Green, and both are Midtown Direct trains requiring no Hoboken transfer. If you buy a home two blocks from the station and one a mile away, the walk or drive to catch that 6:57 express, not the train itself, decides your morning.
How much faster is the early express than the standard range everyone quotes? The documented 6:57 AM express reaches Penn Station in 31 minutes, about 14 minutes quicker than the top of the commonly cited 30-to-45-minute range, and roughly on par with its bottom.
Safety, Flood Risk, and Everyday Livability
| Year | Violent crimes reported | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 26 | – |
| 2023 | 20 | down 23% |
| 2024 | 13 | down 35% |
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data for 2024, the most recent year released, puts Maplewood’s violent crime rate at 51.2 per 100,000 residents, per Patch’s analysis of the federal dataset. Property crime runs higher on a relative basis: NeighborhoodScout’s analysis of the same FBI data puts it at 14 incidents per 1,000 residents. One livability factor no competing guide mentions: First Street’s flood-risk modeling, reported via Redfin, finds 12% of Maplewood properties carry some risk of severe flooding over the next 30 years, a moderate rating for the area.
Is Maplewood a safe town to raise a family in? Violent crime dropped from 26 incidents in 2022 to 13 in 2024, a 35% decline over two years, per FBI data reported by Patch, with a current rate below both state and national averages for violent crime specifically.
Maplewood vs. South Orange vs. Millburn
| Town | Home value | Tax rate (2025, per $100) | Recent DOM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maplewood | $811,268 (Zillow ZHVI) | 2.401 | 16 to 23 days |
| South Orange | $995,000 (Redfin, zip 07079, Feb 2026) | not captured in this dataset; verify with Essex County Board of Taxation | 23 days |
| Millburn | $1,054,346 (Zillow ZHVI) | 2.019 | 21 to 37 days |
Millburn’s home values run roughly 30% above Maplewood’s on the same index, despite Millburn’s lower tax rate, because higher assessed values offset the rate difference. South Orange sits closer to Maplewood on price, but its 2025 general tax rate wasn’t captured in the state table excerpt reviewed for this page and should be confirmed directly before comparing carrying costs.
Is Maplewood’s tax rate higher or lower than Millburn’s? Higher on paper: 2.401 versus 2.019 per $100 of assessed value for 2025. Millburn’s typically higher assessed values mean the actual annual bill gap is smaller than the rate difference alone suggests.
For Investors: What the Public Data Does and Doesn’t Show
The one-year signal available is Zillow’s ZHVI change: Maplewood is up 2.2% over the past year, Millburn up 1.3%. A multi-year appreciation series specific to Maplewood, and any rental-yield or cap-rate figure, did not turn up in the sources reviewed for this page. Investor-facing claims about Maplewood’s long-term returns that don’t cite a specific index and time window are worth treating with skepticism; this page won’t manufacture one to fill the gap.
For Sellers: Timing, With a Caveat
No New Jersey-specific or Maplewood-specific seasonality data, such as the best month to list or inventory by month, surfaced in this research. What is current and sourced: December 2025 through April 2026 closings show 16 to 23 day median time on market across the sources above, consistent with a seller-favorable window right now rather than a stalled market. Confirm current inventory levels with a local agent before setting a listing date.
Lifestyle, Briefly
Maplewood’s Village center is walkable, with restaurants and shops clustered near the train station. South Mountain Reservation borders the town’s western edge for hiking and trails.
Is Maplewood a good town for rental-property investment? The available data doesn’t answer this confidently: no rental-yield or multi-year rent-growth figures for Maplewood specifically were found in public sources, so it’s a question to research with a local property manager rather than answer from townwide indices alone.
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