From Long Beach Island to Montauk: Where Livingston, Millburn, Montclair, and Summit Goes When School Gets Out

You can tell a lot about a community by where it disappears to in July.

Livingston, Millburn, Montclair, Summit - they empty out in the best way. The school parking lots go quiet, the Livingston Oval gets the Fourth of July crowd and then settles into a slower rhythm, and if you pay attention, you start to notice the pattern of where people actually go.

Some head to the Berkshires. There’s something about that crowd – the ones who want a farmhouse table, a good bottle of wine, a hike in the morning and Tanglewood at night.  It’s a particular kind of reset, unhurried and intentional, and it says something about the people who choose it.

Then there’s the Shore contingent. Long Branch, Long Beach Island, Spring Lake, Avalon. The families who’ve been going to the same beach town for twenty years, who have a favorite ice cream place and a parking spot they consider theirs by loyalty if not by law. There’s a comfort to it, a ritual. The kids grow up knowing the same stretch of sand their parents did. It’s not a vacation so much as a second home in spirit, even when it isn’t.

And then there are the ones who make the trip out east. The Hamptons. Montauk. The end of the world in the best possible way.

I’ve been going to Montauk for eight years now. Gurney’s, Marram – the places where the food is as good as the view and neither one disappoints. There’s a version of the Hamptons that’s about being seen, and then there’s Montauk, which still has enough salt and edge to feel like it hasn’t been fully polished yet. That balance won’t last forever, which is part of why I keep going back.

What I find interesting, from where I sit as a real estate agent, is how much these summer patterns say about what people actually want from their lives – and by extension, from their homes. The Berkshires crowd wants quiet and culture within reach. The Shore families want roots, ritual, and room for the kids to run. The east end crowd wants access to something aspirational, something a little harder to get to.

None of that goes away when September comes.

It shows up in how they shop for a home. What they prioritize. What they’re willing to compromise on and what’s non-negotiable. The lot, the neighborhood, the feel of the street on a Sunday morning. These aren’t abstract preferences – they’re extensions of the same instincts that pull people toward the places they love.

Northern New Jersey, at its best, is a home base worthy of what people are coming back to. And the right house in the right town makes that return feel less like the end of summer and more like the other half of a very good life.