JERSEY CITY — Mayor Steve Fulop is moving on up, literally.

Fulop, 38, is relocating three miles north with his girlfriend from a Downtown apartment on Van Vorst Street to a one-family home on a quiet, one-way street in the Jersey City Heights.

Fulop said he closes on the house, located at 360 Ogden Ave., about a block north of Riverview Park, in two weeks. He'll be the second mayor in a row to live in the Heights.

"I'm excited to be a Heights resident," he told The Jersey Journal today, adding about the house, "I fell in love with it."

Real-estate site Zillow puts the three-bedroom home's price tag at $739,000, and says it has three decks with "direct New York City views." It last sold in 2012 for $415,000. Fulop's tax bill will be about $7,700.

Residents of the area describe it as quiet and family-friendly. Jim Kanze, 67, who will live across the street from the mayor, called Ogden Avenue "the jewel of the Heights." Kanze already has at least one complaint he may pass along once Fulop settles in.

"Maybe he can have people slow down," he said. "That speed bump there doesn't help very much."

Fulop's impending move to the city's northern-most neighborhood is a reversal from a previous pledge to buy a house in Bergen-Lafayette, a southeastern Jersey City neighborhood that has pockets of deep poverty and violent crime.

It's also an area where Fulop struggles politically — his rival in the 2013 mayoral race, former Mayor Jerramiah Healy, won about double Fulop's vote total in some Bergen-Lafayette voting districts. Of the city's six wards, Fulop lost only Ward F, largely comprising Bergen-Lafayette, by a narrow margin to Healy.

After he was elected mayor, Fulop said moving to Bergen-Lafayette would "send a strong signal."

"I want to have a commitment to the area beyond just saying it," he said then.

Today, Fulop said he intended to move to Monitor or Whiton streets, but he lost bidding wars on houses there.

"I think the goal was ultimately to buy a house in Jersey City and ... I found a specific house I love," he said.

Fulop's new neighborhood is whiter and wealthier than the Bergen-Lafayette neighborhood where he said he attempted to buy a home, according to U.S. Census figures.



The median income in that area of the Heights is $61,662, versus $50,000 around Whiton and Monitor streets, the figures show. The mayor's new neighborhood is 39 percent white and 7 percent black, versus 30 percent white and 36 percent black near Whiton and Monitor streets.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.