We Buy Houses in Irvington, New Jersey

Irvington packs a population of 61,176 -- an increase of 7,250 people, or 13.4%, from the 2010 census -- into a township with a total area of just 2.92 square miles. That combination gives Irvington the highest population density of any municipality in Essex County, at 20,993.8 people per square mile, which means homes here tend to sit closer together on smaller lots than almost anywhere else in the county. The township borders Newark to the east and Maplewood to the west, with Hillside and Union bordering it to the south and southwest.

The township's name has changed more than once. It was originally known as Camptown, but in 1850, after songwriter Stephen Foster published his ballad "Camptown Races," residents worried the song's activities would become associated with their community -- so the town was renamed Irvingtown that same year, in honor of the writer Washington Irving, and it was incorporated as an independent village on March 27, 1874, out of portions of Clinton Township. That 19th-century incorporation means much of Irvington's housing stock predates modern building codes entirely, which is a big part of what an as-is buyer has to account for. From 1887 to 1965, the township was also home to Olympic Park, a 40-acre amusement park that straddled the Irvington-Maplewood border, and Irvington's business district once supported six movie theatres between the 1920s and 1950s, several with Wurlitzer organs for silent films.

Irvington today includes distinct pockets like Civic Square, the township's administrative and cultural center, and Irving Place, one of the historic unincorporated place names that still shows up in property records across the township. The central business district around the Irvington Bus Terminal on Springfield Avenue was designated a state transit village in July 2015; that terminal, renovated in the early 2000s, is one of NJ Transit's busiest facilities and a regional transit hub, and the township participates in an Urban Enterprise Zone offering a reduced 3.3125% sales tax rate to shoppers at eligible merchants. Irvington is governed under the Faulkner Act's Mayor-Council form, and its public school district is one of the 31 former Abbott districts statewide that were established under a New Jersey Supreme Court decision that requires supplemental state funding for the state's poorer urban districts. With that density and age of housing stock, an as-is sale on an Irvington property has to weigh lot size, proximity to Civic Square, and the age of the structure block by block rather than relying on a single townshipwide number.

The township's Olympic Park era also left behind a stretch of land that has since been redeveloped into more conventional residential and commercial use, a reminder that Irvington's built environment has been reshaped more than once over the last century. Layer on top of that a school system and municipal infrastructure built for a much older, larger population base, and it's easy to see why so many Irvington properties need real work before they would show well on a traditional listing.

The township counted 23,196 housing units at an average density of 7,922.0 per square mile, which is another way of measuring just how tightly Irvington's homes are packed onto its 2.92 square miles. The Elizabeth River also runs through the township, passing Civic Square and Clinton Cemetery on its way through -- a geographic feature that affects drainage and flood risk for some Irvington properties in ways that don't show up on a simple square-footage comparison.

Because Irvington was incorporated as a village back in 1874 and its homes are packed onto just 2.92 square miles, deferred maintenance and outdated systems show up more often here than in the county's less dense suburbs -- and Irvington also carried the ninth-highest equalized property tax rate in New Jersey as of 2020, at 4.890%, which adds another factor sellers weigh when deciding whether to renovate and list or sell as-is. That combination is exactly the kind of property condition that makes selling as-is, rather than after a full renovation, the more realistic path for a lot of Irvington sellers.

New to As-Is Home Buyer? Our essex home buyers page explains how the offer and closing process works before you commit to anything. Sellers who searched “sell my house fast essex” will find the same quick timeline we offer here in Irvington. And our we buy houses in essex county nj page covers the types of properties we purchase across the county.