Main Street in Hackensack runs two ways again, and that small traffic change is the clearest sign of the biggest downtown story in Bergen County. The city rebuilt the street itself with new sidewalks, planter boxes, hundreds of trees, and decorative lighting, and the buildings followed. More than 3,000 new residential units downtown are finished or under construction, with roughly 2,000 more moving through planning and approvals. New restaurants keep opening on and around Main Street to feed the people arriving.
Hackensack is the county seat of Bergen County, a city of about 46,000 that holds the county’s courts, one of New Jersey’s largest hospitals, and a serious share of its jobs. For years, buyers drove past it on the way to quieter boroughs. I tell my clients to stop and look now. This is the one place in Bergen County where you can buy into a genuine urban revival at a price that still makes sense.
1. The County Seat Is Rebuilding Itself in Real Time
Most towns talk about revitalizing their downtown. Hackensack rezoned for it, funded it, and is building it. The city’s rehabilitation plan laid out a clear vision for a mixed use, pedestrian friendly downtown, and the results are visible block by block: restored two way traffic on Main Street, new streetscapes, and thousands of apartments either open or going vertical. City planning documents project an increase of roughly 4,000 residential units over the next several years, along with new retail, parks, performing arts spaces, and open air plazas.
Here is why that matters if you are buying rather than renting. Momentum like this tends to compound. Every new building brings residents, every new resident supports another storefront, and the neighborhood you buy into today is not the neighborhood you will own in five years. In most of Bergen County you pay for a finished product. In Hackensack you can still buy the trajectory.
2. Hackensack University Medical Center Anchors the Whole City
Hackensack University Medical Center is one of the largest hospitals in New Jersey and the flagship of the Hackensack Meridian Health network. It is a nonprofit teaching and research hospital with a workforce of more than 7,600 people, which makes it one of Bergen County’s largest employers, and the network describes it as the state’s largest provider of inpatient and outpatient services.
An anchor institution of that size changes the real estate math. Doctors, nurses, residents, technicians, and administrative staff all need places to live, and plenty of them want to walk or drive five minutes to work. That is a deep, recession resistant pool of buyers and renters, which is exactly what you want behind your purchase. Homes near major hospitals rarely sit. When my clients ask me what protects value in Hackensack long term, the honest answer starts with the hospital.
3. Two Train Stations and a Direct Bus Into Manhattan
Hackensack is one of the few Bergen County towns with two of its own rail stations. Anderson Street and Essex Street both sit on NJ Transit’s Pascack Valley Line, which runs to Hoboken Terminal, and riders transfer at Secaucus Junction for New York Penn Station. Anderson Street serves the north side of downtown and Essex Street serves the south end, so a large share of the new apartment stock is within walking distance of one or the other.
Bus commuters have it even simpler. NJ Transit’s 165 route runs through Hackensack directly to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown, with stops threaded through the city. Drivers reach Route 4 in minutes for the George Washington Bridge, and Route 17 and Interstate 80 are right there for everything else. Between two trains, a one seat bus, and three highways, this is real commuting flexibility, not a single fragile option.
4. The Most Accessible Entry Price in Central Bergen
Here is the number that gets attention. Redfin put Hackensack’s median sale price around $465,000 in early 2026, and Zillow’s typical home value for the city sits near $392,000. Compare that with the seven figure medians in towns a few miles north and you understand why first time buyers and downsizers keep calling me about Hackensack.
The stock is genuinely varied: condo and co-op buildings from several eras, capes and colonials on the residential side streets, two family homes that let an owner offset the mortgage, and the new luxury rental buildings downtown for anyone testing the city before buying. Condo values here have been climbing faster than single family prices per square foot, which tells you where demand is heading. For buyers priced out of the rest of the county, this is not settling. It is getting in early.
5. The Shops at Riverside and Real Everyday Convenience
On the northern edge of the city, The Shops at Riverside gives Hackensack something few New Jersey downtowns can claim next door: a genuinely upscale shopping center, with dining to match, including Morton’s The Steakhouse and the newer Capon’s Chophouse. It is the kind of amenity neighboring towns drive to. Here it is five minutes from your door.
Daily life is just as practical. The county offices, courts, and services are in town by definition. Grocery runs, hardware stores, gyms, and medical offices are all inside city limits, and the Hackensack River waterfront adds green space along the eastern edge. Schools are a fair question here, and I give it to clients straight: Niche grades the district B minus overall and ranks Hackensack High School with a B, and the district’s diversity is one of the things families consistently praise in reviews. Value buyers should weigh that honestly against the price advantage.
Where to Eat in Hackensack
Hackensack’s food scene runs deeper than any town its size has a right to. You get institutions that have been griddling and saucing since the 1940s and 1950s, plus a new wave of openings riding the downtown revival. These five tell the story, from a 1946 slider counter to a chef driven chophouse.
Capon’s Chophouse
Chef Josh Capon, a familiar face from New York’s restaurant scene and years of television, chose Hackensack for his modern chophouse at The Shops at Riverside. That choice says plenty about where this city is heading. The room is polished without being stiff, and the menu centers on prime cuts, seafood, and the kind of sides you argue over.
Dinner runs nightly and reservations book through the restaurant’s site or OpenTable. It has quickly become the special occasion room for this part of the county, the place locals take out of town guests to make a point.
Why locals love it: A legitimate name brand chef steakhouse without crossing the bridge into Manhattan prices and Manhattan parking.
White Manna
White Manna has been sliding onion griddled burgers across the counter on River Street since 1946, out of a tiny glass and chrome building that looks like it drove out of a postcard. The formula has not changed: small balls of fresh beef smashed with onions on the flat top, served on soft potato rolls, best ordered by the handful.
It is one of the most famous burger destinations in New Jersey, written up by national food press for decades, and the line out the door on a Saturday is part of the experience. Seating is scarce. Nobody minds.
Why locals love it: It is a working piece of Hackensack history that still costs pocket change and still beats the trendy smash burger places copying it.
Cubby’s BBQ
Cubby’s has been feeding Hackensack from River Street for more than three decades, and the ribs are the reason: meaty, tender, charred at the edges, and finished in a sweet and tangy house sauce people buy by the bottle. The menu goes well past barbecue, with burgers, sandwiches, and homestyle platters that explain the packed lunch rush.
Longtime owner Bobby Egan is a local character with stories you would not believe, and the room has that lived in, everybody knows the counter staff feel that chains spend millions failing to fake.
Why locals love it: Big honest portions, ribs with a real following, and a place that has shown up for this city for over thirty years.
The Lido Restaurant
The Lido has held down the north end of Main Street since 1956, and it wears the years well. The thin crust bar pie is the headliner, crisp to the edge with a sauce and cheese balance that earned a strong 8.1 from the One Bite pizza review crowd, and regulars will tell you the steak sandwich deserves equal billing.
It is open daily, takes reservations, and functions as a genuine neighborhood dining room where courthouse lawyers, hospital staff, and third generation regulars share the same tables.
Why locals love it: Seventy years of the same family style consistency, and a bar pie that people cross county lines for.
Llama Sam
Llama Sam is the new wave, a modern Peruvian restaurant that opened on Bergen Street in late 2025 and drew attention fast. The kitchen leans into bold, fresh flavors, ceviches and Peruvian classics done with care, in an intimate space steps from the county seat’s civic core.
Early reviews have been enthusiastic, and the restaurant already runs its own online ordering. Openings like this one are exactly what the downtown plan was designed to attract, and residents are showing up for it.
Why locals love it: Fresh, modern Peruvian cooking that proves the new Hackensack food scene is substance, not just press releases.
What Hackensack’s Food Scene Says About the Town
Look at those five together and you see the whole city. A 1946 burger landmark and a 1956 pizza institution that never left, a barbecue joint that fed the county seat for thirty years, and now a celebrity chef steakhouse and a modern Peruvian newcomer betting on the future. Towns in decline lose their institutions. Towns on the rise keep them and add. Hackensack is doing both at once, and that is the strongest evidence I can offer that this renaissance is real.
Ready to Make Hackensack Home?
If you want to buy into Bergen County’s most convincing comeback while the entry price is still reasonable, let’s talk. I can walk you through the condo buildings, the two family opportunities, and the blocks closest to the train stations, and if you are weighing Hackensack against its neighbors, my Teaneck guide covers the town right across the river. The buyers who understand this market early are the ones who will look smartest in five years.
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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.
