Living in a Brooklyn apartment with two young children in the middle of the pandemic, Megan Melamed, 41, and Alex Abell, 39, started their search for a suburban home in Maplewood, N.J. But the couple, both social workers, soon realized it was out of their price range, so they turned to the nearby Essex County township of West Orange, where they eventually bought a 1915 house with four bedrooms in October 2020, for $457,500.

The couple’s story is typical of how many buyers find West Orange — after searching in better known but more expensive communities, like Maplewood and Montclair.