Anthony Licciardello | July 23, 2026
Short Hills, NJ
The series ends where the terrain does: Mountaintop, the high ground of Hartshorn’s glacial hills — the section so rarefied that a national brokerage’s neighborhood map currently holds exactly one listing inside it, a six-bedroom, eight-bath estate offered at $14,000 a month. On the avenue climbing the ridge, lots average 0.83 acres and tax bills average $45,200 — both the highest street figures this nine-part series has recorded. The complete brief on the top of the map — and the series ladder, finished.
Mountaintop is the ninth of the township’s nine official Short Hills sections and the least publicly defined — fittingly, since it names the highest reach of the glacial terrain Stewart Hartshorn built his whole plan around. The mapped reality is stark: Compass’s Mountaintop neighborhood polygon currently contains a single listing — 1 Kean Road, a six-bedroom, eight-bath estate offered for rent at $14,000 a month — with the South Mountain and Reservation areas at its shoulder. Almost nothing here sells publicly; the section’s scale must be read from the high ground’s street economics instead.
And those economics are the series’ superlatives. Highland Avenue — the ridge-climbing avenue whose customary attribution blurs, as everywhere in this township, between Old Short Hills and the Mountaintop heights — runs 46 addresses averaging 0.83-acre lots and $45.2K annual taxes: the largest lots and heaviest carrying costs of any street this series has measured, implying average 2017-era assessments near $2.24 million. Whichever name any given parcel wears, the elevation’s message is uniform: this is where the township’s land, its bills, and its discretion all peak — and where the nine-section ladder this series has built rung by rung reaches its top.
Nine posts ago this series began at the founder’s quarter with a promise: cover every official section on verified evidence, and say so plainly wherever the record runs thin. It ends at the section where thinness is the entire point. This is Mountaintop — the high ground our neighborhoods guide places at the interior’s edge — read from the one mapped listing, the ridge avenue’s record data, and the completed ladder that now locates all nine sections on a single measure.
The public record on Mountaintop is a study in scarcity. The township names the section officially; the market maps it — Compass maintains a Mountaintop, Short Hills polygon — and inside that polygon today sits exactly one offering: 1 Kean Road, six bedrooms and eight baths, offered at $14,000 a month. That single data point carries two real signals: the section’s scale (an eight-bath estate as the representative product) and the existence of the township’s quiet estate-rental tier — the market serving relocating households that lease at the summit before buying into it, a strategy worth knowing exists.
Everything else about Mountaintop must be read the way this series has learned to read the quiet interior: through adjacency and terrain. The section crowns the glacial high ground with the South Mountain and Reservation areas at its shoulder, above the estate band it grades into — and like Merrywood, its rare listings surface under umbrella names rather than its own. The section that names the summit, in other words, behaves like one: visible from everywhere, publicly accessible almost nowhere.
Hartshorn’s 1874 design principle — houses sited to their knolls, roads bent to the land, canopy preserved — reaches its logical maximum at maximum elevation: up here, the terrain itself does the architecture’s heavy lifting, with long approaches, broken sightlines, and grounds that read as landscape rather than yard. The ridge’s signature avenue makes the point in public records: Highland Avenue’s 46 addresses average 0.83 acres — the largest street-average lot this series has measured, half again the estate interior’s arterial average — and the archival record on the avenue includes the 1924 brick English country manor on 1.3 park-like acres our Old Short Hills brief documented, the Gatsby-era type at home on the climb.
One attribution honesty, held to the series standard: Highland Avenue’s customary section identity blurs between Old Short Hills and the Mountaintop heights it ascends toward — period listings have marketed its addresses under the former — so we present its data as the high ground’s economics rather than any one section’s roster. The elevation, not the label, is what the numbers describe: and on this terrain, the numbers are the township’s largest.
The instrument this series has carried from post to post — average street taxes, one consistent public-records measure — now runs its full length, from the value door to the summit:
Source: average annual property taxes by street per Redfin and Ownerly public-records data, 2026 — the single consistent measure applied across the entire Section Series. All figures computed on Essex County’s 2017-era assessments; Highland Avenue’s customary attribution spans Old Short Hills and the Mountaintop heights. Street averages describe blocks, not individual homes.
The summit’s arithmetic, disclosed as always: $45.2K average taxes at the township’s 2.019% rate imply average assessments near $2.24 million — in 2017 dollars, per the time-capsule mechanics, with current market values on the high ground running well beyond and the ~2029 revaluation’s redistribution mathematics carrying their maximum stakes exactly here, where post-2017 appreciation on estate land has the furthest to be re-measured. The $14,000-a-month Kean Road offering completes the picture from the income side: at the summit, even the rental tier prices like a mortgage. Buyers underwriting Mountaintop-grade product should model bills at purchase price, stress-test the revaluation, and — per every estate chapter in this series — let someone who has walked the grounds do the comping, because up here the land is the ledger.
Mountaintop fits the buyer the whole ladder has been climbing toward: the household purchasing elevation itself — the terrain, the discretion, the grounds-as-landscape — with the district and the ZIP long since taken for granted. The playbook is the estate interior’s at full altitude: patience measured in years, representation that knows the high ground’s streets by name, the rental tier considered as a strategic bridge, and every ask verified as to what, physically and legally, is being sold. Watch the Short Hills homes for sale with the summit’s street names in hand — and expect the wait to be the price of admission.
And with that, the map is complete. Nine sections, nine briefs, every one built on what verifies: Knollwood, the founder’s quarter and its $3.588M ceiling; Glenwood, the value door at $1.49M; the Poet’s Section, the family quarter on the third-acre band; Old Short Hills Estates, the prestige pole and its road-versus-section lesson; White Oak Ridge, the western edge’s recorded 2025 belt; Deerfield-Crossroads, the new-construction capital; Merrywood, the quietest name; Brookhaven, thirty years on one sidewalk; and Mountaintop, the top of the terrain and of the ladder. One township, one district, one tax system — nine genuinely different answers. The neighborhoods guide holds the map; the complete Short Hills hub holds the town; and whichever section is yours, the method is the same everywhere: verify, prepare, and be ready the week it matters.
“Every ladder needs a top rung, and in Short Hills it’s the one you can barely see from the street — which is exactly the point. Mountaintop doesn’t list, doesn’t advertise, and mostly doesn’t sell; it waits. After nine sections and every verified number my team could pull, my closing advice for this town is one sentence: pick your rung honestly, prepare like the family down the block is bidding too, and let the ladder’s arithmetic — which we’ve now printed in full — do the convincing.”
— Anthony Licciardello, Broker, The Prodigy Team
Every guide on this site is part of a system: town-by-town content clusters, dedicated neighborhood pages, and cross-state marketing engineered for one outcome — putting your listing in front of the motivated New York families already searching for it. I’m Anthony Licciardello, Broker of The Prodigy Team — a former Director of Community Affairs in the Bloomberg Administration and a member of the Staten Island Growth Management Task Force — and this pipeline is what 22 years and 5,000 closings taught me to build.
Our Above the Streets cinematic drone series extends that reach — aerial storytelling that markets entire towns, not just listings, with audience performance exceeding industry benchmarks for real estate media.
Anthony Licciardello · Broker, The Prodigy Team · 718-873-7345
Nine briefs, one method. Tell us your life’s actual geometry — commute, schools, land, quiet — and your number, and we’ll put the right two sections in front of you with the verified ladder behind every recommendation.
What is the Mountaintop section of Short Hills?
The ninth of the township’s nine official Short Hills sections and the least publicly defined — the high ground of the glacial terrain, adjacent to the South Mountain and Reservation areas. The market maps it (a national brokerage maintains a Mountaintop polygon), but its listings are exceptionally rare: the polygon currently contains a single offering, a six-bedroom, eight-bath estate for rent at $14,000 a month.
How much does it cost to live in the Mountaintop area?
Public sales evidence is the township’s thinnest, so the honest instruments are structural: on Highland Avenue, the ridge’s signature avenue, 46 addresses average 0.83-acre lots and $45.2K annual taxes — both the highest street figures in our nine-part series — implying average 2017-era assessments near $2.24 million, with market values running well beyond. Even the rental tier prices accordingly: $14,000 a month for the section’s one mapped offering.
What is the high ground of Short Hills like?
Hartshorn’s 1874 terrain-first design at its maximum: long approaches, broken sightlines, homes sited to their knolls on grounds that read as landscape — the largest street-average lots in the township, with archival exemplars like the 1924 brick English country manor on 1.3 park-like acres. Attribution on the climb is customary — addresses blur between Old Short Hills and Mountaintop — but the elevation’s economics are uniform.
How do I buy in Mountaintop or the high ground?
With years-scale patience and street-level representation: listings are rare, often surface under umbrella names, and clear to prepared buyers. Consider the estate rental tier as a strategic bridge while waiting; model taxes at purchase price against the 2017 rolls with the ~2029 revaluation stress-tested (the stakes peak on estate land); and have every ask verified as to exactly what is being sold before touring.
Old Short Hills Estates: The Prestige Pole (No. 4)
Merrywood: The Quietest Section (No. 7)
Short Hills Neighborhoods: Nine Sections, Three Bands
Moving to Short Hills, NJ: The Complete Guide
Section recognition per Millburn Township’s official taxonomy. Mapped-section reality per Compass’s Mountaintop, Short Hills neighborhood pages (polygon; 1 Kean Road, 6BR/8BA, offered at $14,000/month, the sole current in-polygon listing; adjacent-area roster including South Mountain and Reservation). Highland Avenue street data (46 addresses; average lot 36,148 sq ft / ~0.83 acre; average tax $45.2K) per Redfin public records; implied assessment is disclosed arithmetic ($45.2K ÷ 2.019%); the avenue’s customary attribution spans Old Short Hills and the Mountaintop heights, per period listing records, and its data is presented as the high ground’s economics rather than a section roster. Series tax ladder per the street datasets cited in Series Nos. 1–5. Archival exemplar (1924 English country manor, 1.3 acres) per Millburn-Short Hills listing archives. Where the public record is thin — and at the summit it is by design — this post says so rather than estimating. Verify all figures independently before transacting. This post is general information, not an appraisal.
Prodigy Real Estate is an innovative real estate company offering high-end video production, home valuation services, purchasing, and home sales. Serving New York and New Jersey.
