Bergen County towns / Northern Valley
Demarest
Wooded, quiet and almost entirely single-family; the old railway right-of-way is now a walking path through the middle of town.
Getting to Manhattan
Bus to Port Authority. Budget roughly 52 minutes door to Midtown at peak — confirm against the current timetable, and test the trip yourself before you commit to a town on the strength of its commute.
The market here
Demarest sits in Northern Valley, with roughly 1,300 households and a median around $1.3M. That places it toward the upper end of the county. What a number like that hides is the spread — in a borough this size, the street matters more than the median.
A fuller guide is coming
I am writing these one town at a time. If Demarest is on your list now, call me and I will give you the long version over the phone — schools, taxes, which blocks I would and would not buy on.