Stand on Route 17 on a Saturday afternoon and Paramus is exactly what the rest of the country thinks it is: four major malls and more than six billion dollars a year in retail sales, reportedly more than any other ZIP code in America. Come back Sunday morning and the same road sits nearly empty. The stores are dark, the parking lots are clear, and for one day a week the town belongs entirely to the people who live in it.
That contrast is the whole story of living in Paramus. Shoppers know the first version. My buyers care about the second, and about the quiet arithmetic underneath it. All of that commerce pays a serious share of the borough’s bills, which is how a town of about 26,700 people sitting dead center in Bergen County keeps residential taxes more reasonable than nearly any neighbor at this price point. Here are the five reasons Paramus keeps winning buyers who thought they wanted somewhere else.
1. A Retail Giant That Helps Pay Your Tax Bill
This is the number one reason my Paramus clients smile at closing. Commercial property makes up roughly half of the borough’s tax base, and Westfield Garden State Plaza alone accounts for about ten percent of all property taxes collected in town. Every register that rings on Route 4 and Route 17 is quietly subsidizing the homeowners on the side streets.
The result shows up in the numbers. Paramus carries a median effective property tax rate around 1.47 percent, roughly half the New Jersey statewide median of 2.88 percent. On a typical home that works out to a low five figure annual bill. That is still real money, but in a county where comparable houses in neighboring towns can run thousands more per year in taxes, Paramus is one of the few places in Bergen where the math genuinely bends in the buyer’s favor.
2. Blue Laws Keep Sundays Genuinely Quiet
Bergen County is the last county in the region still enforcing a Sunday retail ban, and Paramus goes further than the county does. The borough’s own ordinance, on the books since 1968, shuts down nearly all Sunday commerce except groceries, pharmacies, gas stations, restaurants, and entertainment. The town has defended those rules vigorously, including taking the American Dream megamall to court in 2025 over Sunday retail operations.
Here is what that means in practice. Six days a week, Paramus absorbs shoppers from three states. On the seventh, the highways clear, the malls go dark, and the town is as quiet as any leafy borough in the county. Residents overwhelmingly support keeping it that way, and once you have spent a Sunday here, you understand why. It is the rare zoning quirk that functions as a lifestyle amenity.
3. Schools With Range, Plus a College in Town
Paramus Public Schools rank among the top school districts in Bergen County on Niche, currently sitting 13th in a county famous for education, with a district rating of 4.29 out of 5. Paramus High School runs a student teacher ratio of about 11 to 1 and offers an unusually wide elective menu, from culinary arts and fashion to coding, woodshop, and sculpture. It is a district that serves the honors track and the hands-on kid with equal seriousness.
The town also hosts the main campus of Bergen Community College on Paramus Road, the largest community college in New Jersey. For families, that means dual enrollment options in high school and an affordable first two years of college without leaving town. Few Bergen boroughs can offer preschool through associate degree inside their own borders.
4. Postwar Neighborhoods With Real Lot Sizes
Turn off the highways and Paramus becomes a different town. The residential streets are filled with postwar colonials, capes, ranches, and split levels on lots that run noticeably larger than what the same money buys in much of eastern Bergen. Many have been expanded or rebuilt entirely, which is why the market now includes everything from original condition capes to new construction over five thousand square feet.
The market reflects the demand. Recent figures put the median sale price around 1.2 million dollars, up about 7.5 percent year over year, with homes averaging roughly 39 days on market. And the neighborhoods come with a genuine centerpiece: Van Saun County Park, home of the Bergen County Zoo, the Safari Express train, a carousel, and the Winter Wonderland ice rink each holiday season. It is one of the best family parks in the county, and it is in your backyard.
5. A Dead Center Commute, In Every Direction
Paramus sits at the geographic center of Bergen County, and the commuting math follows. NJ Transit’s 163, 164, and 165 bus routes run the Route 4 and Route 17 corridors into the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown, with the 163 scheduled at about 46 minutes from the Garden State Plaza area into the city. Park and ride access makes the bus a genuine daily option, not a fallback.
Drivers may have it even better. Route 4 runs about ten miles straight east to the George Washington Bridge, and Route 17 and the Garden State Parkway both cross the borough for commutes north and south. Because you are dead center in the county, everything else in Bergen sits within about 20 minutes: the Northern Valley, the Pascack Valley, Ridgewood, Hackensack’s hospitals and courts. For two career households working in different directions, Paramus is often the compromise that satisfies both.
Where to Eat in Paramus
Nobody moves to Paramus for the food courts, and nobody should judge the town by them. Behind the highway frontage there is a set of genuinely local restaurants, some of them generations old, that residents guard the way other towns guard their downtowns. These are the five I send people to first.
Biagio’s Ristorante
Biagio’s has anchored Paramus Road for more than three decades, a family owned Italian restaurant and banquet house where Chef Jimmy Perides still runs a homemade kitchen. The dining room, with its stone fireplace and warm terra cotta walls, handles everything from a Tuesday dinner to a two hundred person celebration in the banquet rooms upstairs.
The menu is home style Italian done properly: fresh pasta, veal, seafood, and a bar that stays open late every night of the week. It is the kind of operation that only survives thirty years in one town by being consistent.
Why locals love it: It is the room where Paramus celebrates, from christenings to retirements, and the kitchen has never phoned one in.
El Cid
El Cid is a family owned Spanish restaurant on Paramus Road that has been serving paella, prime rib, and pitchers of sangria for decades, and after a brief hiatus it is back under the same ownership. The dining room runs on old world pacing: unhurried courses, career waiters, portions built for sharing.
Regulars order the paella and the garlic shrimp, and the steaks hold their own against far more expensive rooms. It is unpretentious in the best way, a special occasion restaurant that never makes you feel like you are on stage.
Why locals love it: The sangria and paella taste exactly like they did twenty years ago, and around here that counts as a promise kept.
The Orange Lantern
Established in 1933, the Orange Lantern is the oldest gathering spot in Paramus, a tavern tucked on Firehouse Lane that predates every mall in town by decades. It is best known for its thin, crackling bar pie, the style Bergen County taverns made famous, along with burgers, live music, and trivia nights that pull a genuine cross section of the town.
This is where Paramus actually hangs out. Little league teams, firefighters, families who have been coming for three generations. The room is small, the walls are covered in history, and the pie comes out fast.
Why locals love it: Ninety years on, it is still the bar pie every other bar pie in town gets measured against.
Shokudo Ramen & Sushi
Shokudo sits on Route 17 and quietly outcooks most of the highway around it, holding a 4.7 star average on the strength of house crafted broths and genuinely fresh sushi. The room leans playful, with cherry blossom murals and anime touches, but the tonkotsu is serious work.
It fills the slot every town needs: the reliable casual spot for a fast, warm, inexpensive dinner that still feels made by hand. Service is quick enough for a school night and the takeout operation is dialed in.
Why locals love it: It is the best bowl of ramen on the Route 17 corridor, at a school night price.
Kiku Japanese Steakhouse
Kiku is the Paramus hibachi institution, a big, lively steakhouse on Route 17 with teppanyaki tables, a full sushi bar, and chefs who have been flipping shrimp into hats here for years. It earned a Reader’s Choice award for Bergen County, and on weekend nights the tables fill with birthday parties from all over the county.
Come for the show, stay for the filet and the Godzilla roll. It is not quiet and it is not trying to be. It is the place your kids will request every single year.
Why locals love it: Half the birthdays in Paramus have been celebrated around a Kiku hibachi table, and the other half are scheduled.
What Paramus’s Food Scene Says About the Town
Paramus could have let the national chains swallow its dining scene whole, and it did not. A 1933 tavern, a decades old Spanish house, and a thirty year Italian kitchen all thrive within a few miles of the busiest retail corridor in America, because the people who live here keep choosing them. That is Paramus in one sentence: commerce out front, community behind it, and residents who know exactly which one matters more.
Ready to Make Paramus Home?
Paramus rewards buyers who look past the highway frontage, and I know which streets deliver the quiet, the lot size, and the tax math that make this town such a smart buy. If you are weighing Paramus against a classic downtown, read my guide to living in Ridgewood and then let’s tour both in one afternoon. I will show you the difference in person.
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Tom Lee | NJNest
Phone: 848-565-1425
Email: tom@njnest.com
Website: njnest.com
Tom Lee is a licensed real estate agent with 2Win Realty, specializing in Bergen County residential real estate. With deep local expertise and a client-first approach, Tom helps buyers and sellers across all 70 Bergen County municipalities make confident real estate decisions.
