$22.5 million home for sale is just par for the course in the Beverly Hills of NJ

Welcome to Alpine, a municipality that, according to comedian Chris Rock, is a New Jersey town only in geographic terms.

“That’s not Jersey,” the comedian and one of Alpine’s 1,754 residents recently explained to the Hollywood news website Vulture. “That’s like Beverly Hills with freaking snow.”

The median home listing price in October in the tiny town was nearly $6 million, according to Realtor.com. A recent profile of the town in The Wall Street Journal noted that the lofty figure makes the Hamptons the only pricier zip code in the New York City tri-state area. Even Greenwich, Connecticut and the Tribeca neighborhood in Manhattan pale in comparison, the WSJ said. Realtor.com reported the median price was almost $4.2 million in March 2019.

Current Alpine listings on Realtor.com include a seven-bedroom, nine-and-a-half bath mansion on a 2-acre lot for $22,490,000; a more modest home just short of deserving McMansion status on 1 acre for $1,950,000; and a 1.59-acre lot for $2,275,000.

Current or former residents are said to include musical stars Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jay-Z, Lil’ Kim and Britney Spears; professional athletes Johnny Damon, CC Sabathia and Ilya Kovalchuk; as well as actor Wesley Snipes and political strategist Kellyanne Conway.

This easternmost town in the state, 10 miles from the George Washington Bridge and 15 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, is located on the Hudson River. The Palisades, a spectacular wall of cliffs located in Palisades Interstate Park, is a place to hike, bike, picnic, birdwatch or fish in the Hudson River - so close to New York City that Devil’s Tower, a stone water tower in the heart of town that some feel is haunted, has a view of the Manhattan skyline.

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The growth of the hamlet to a destination place for wealthy celebrities to live likely comes from the combination of its proximity to the city, the privacy its large lot sizes offer, its low tax rate compared to many New Jersey municipalities, and the absence of crowd-drawing mixed-used town centers. The low tax rate is in part due to the lack of a library, recreation or senior centers, as well as the fact that a sizable portion of the homes use septic tanks and are not connected to the sewer system. The town does provide police protection, leaf collection and snow removal. Also, Alpine’s teenagers attend the highly ranked Tenafly High School.

“The fact that we’re so near to Manhattan but a world apart in terms of our physical surroundings – we’re in a very natural setting here – contributes to our desirability,” said Mayor Paul H. Tomasko, a 47-year Alpine resident. “We’ve evolved over the last couple of decades from a very rustic place to a more conspicuous entity.”

The mayor says the changes have been an overall upgrade for the town. “We’re no longer rustic, but I think it’s fair to say we’re still rural,” he says. “We have a more manicured look now, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Alpine New Jersey's 1,800 residents live in priciest zip code in state