This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
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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.
Watchung is a somewhat small borough located in the state of New Jersey. With a population of 6,428 people and just one neighborhood, Watchung is the 271st largest community in New Jersey.
Watchung home prices are not only among the most expensive in New Jersey, but Watchung real estate also consistently ranks among the most expensive in America.
Occupations and Workforce
Watchung is a decidedly white-collar borough, with fully 88.63% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Watchung is a borough of managers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Watchung who work in management occupations (19.06%), business and financial occupations (10.65%), and office and administrative support (10.34%).
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 24.54% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Watchung is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Watchung a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The borough’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Watchung has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Watchung’s overall crime rate is lower than average for the country.
One downside of living in Watchung, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 31.34 minutes every day commuting to work. However, local public transit is widely used. For those who would prefer to avoid driving entirely and leave their car at home, it may be an option to use the transit instead.
Even though Watchung is a smaller borough, it has many people who hop on public transportation – mostly the bus for their daily commute to work. Typically, these people are commuting to good jobs in the surrounding cities.
Demographics
Do you like to read, write and learn? If you move to Watchung, you'll likely find that many of your neighbors like to as well. Watchung is one of the more educated communities in America, with a full 60.30% of its adults having a college degree or even advanced degree, compared to a national average across all communities of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Watchung in 2022 was $73,470, which is wealthy relative to New Jersey and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $293,880 for a family of four.
Watchung is a very ethnically-diverse borough. The people who call Watchung home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Watchung residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Watchung include Italian, Irish, Polish, German, and English.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Watchung's cultural character, accounting for 20.32% of the borough’s population.
The most common language spoken in Watchung is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Langs. of India.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
People
Of note is NeighborhoodScout's research finding that the neighborhood has some of the lowest rates of children living in poverty of any neighborhood in the United States. In a nation where approximately 1 in 4 children are living in poverty, the community truly stands out from the rest in this regard.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Portuguese and Czechoslovakian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Portuguese ancestry and 0.7% have Czechoslovakian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 3.5% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Korean at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Watchung are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 94.9% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America's neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 57.8% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 18.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (12.5%), and 11.4% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
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 neighborhood is English, spoken by 80.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Langs. of India and Korean.
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 neighborhood in Watchung, NJ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Italian (19.2%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (17.0%), and residents who report Asian roots (13.8%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (9.0%), along with some German ancestry residents (9.0%), among others. In addition, 20.3% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (31.5% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (63.1%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
