An 8,500-square-foot turreted mansion going up on the site of a 5,000-square-foot colonial that itself replaced a 3,000-square foot split-level is not an unusual phenomenon in this two-square-mile town of strictly single-family residences. As Mr. Liau put it: “People are feeling better about the economy and they want to make improvements. It’s just a natural progression.” But as far as his house is concerned, Mr. Liau, who works in the investment office of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, says updating will require a lottery windfall.
Frank Sorrentino, on the other hand, recalls having had no doubt that he would replace the 1960 “sugar maple split” he bought in 1987 when he and his wife and young son moved here from Cliffside Park. “It was poorly built, termite-ridden,” he said. “It was no crying shame to demolish it.” The Sorrentinos still live in the four-bedroom five-and-a-half-bath colonial that replaced the split-level in 1991.
Mr. Sorrentino, who worked as a building contractor in the ’90s and early 2000s, replaced some 30 other homes in Englewood Cliffs, for “younger people coming back with families to Englewood Cliffs for its spectacular location, but they wanted something more than a 3,000-square-foot home.” Now, as the chief executive of ConnectOne Bank, a commercial lender in town, he counts many of the current crop of home builders as bank customers.
Some neighboring towns suffered a significant drop in home values during the economic downturn, but “Englewood Cliffs has always been a good investment,” said Terry Plawker, who has lived in this town of 5,280 residents for 45 years and has run a real estate business for more than 30. The first asset she and others mention is the low taxes, followed by the proximity to New York City. The town’s tax status is due to the presence of several major corporate headquarters, while the ease of access to New York comes thanks to the George Washington Bridge just five minutes away.
Another attraction, according to Helena Lobo-Zagorski, is the relaxed zoning that allows for larger homes to be built on smaller properties. “There’s a fair amount of people who don’t care about a large lawn and maintenance,” said Ms. Lobo-Zagorski, a broker with Sotheby’s Prominent Properties. “They’re O.K. with having a beautiful home with a little backyard.”
Both Mr. Liau and Mr. Sorrentino moved to Englewood Cliffs years ago with their parents, choosing it as the spot to raise their own families. In both cases, their parents still live in town and have helped out. Mr. Liau’s parents take care of their 3-year-old grandson, Peter, each day while he and his wife, Jessica Park, an auditor for an investment bank, commute into the city. “I guess you could say we see a lot of them,” Mr. Liau said of his parents. “We go to their house every night to pick our son up, and stay for dinner.”
What You’ll Find
Some early 20th-century houses can be found at the southern end of town near Fort Lee, but the first significant wave of residential construction in Englewood Cliffs took place in the 1950s and ’60s, after the Palisades Interstate Parkway was completed in 1957.
East Palisade Avenue divides the long, narrow town into North and South Cliffs. Properties in North Cliffs are larger but rarely have more than half an acre; most houses in South Cliffs have 0.25 acres or less. Teardowns for larger houses occur more often at the north end, though new houses can be found in South Cliffs, stretching almost to the property line.
Michele Kolsky-Assatly, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker, finds Englewood Cliffs distinctive among the towns that face Manhattan, describing it as “the beginning of true suburbia, without the high-rises.” There are no apartments or town houses, though there are usually a handful of houses available for rent, a popular option for corporate executives relocated here for a year or two, Ms. Kolsky-Assatly said. In the 2010 census, 38.5 percent of residents described themselves as Asian-American — an increase of 9 percent since 2000 — with more than half being of Korean descent.
