Timberbirch Homes for Sale

Living in Timberbirch

Timberbirch is one of the larger detached neighborhoods in Gloucester Township, built in 1960 across a wide set of curving streets on the township's eastern edge. Nearly the whole community went up in that single year — a handful of homes on the outer edges came later in the sixties and seventies — and that concentration is why it reads as a coherent place rather than a collection of streets.

One thing to clear up before searching. Timberbirch carries a Somerdale 08083 mailing address, and you will see listings describe it as a section of Somerdale. That is the post office talking. Somerdale is a separate borough with its own school district, and Timberbirch is not in it — every home here is in Gloucester Township, on Gloucester Township taxes, in Gloucester Township schools. Records in this neighborhood occasionally name the borough district by mistake. If school district is a factor in your search, confirm it on the specific property rather than reading it off a listing field, because this particular field gets filled in wrong here more often than anywhere else in the township.

The housing stock is unusually single-minded. This is a neighborhood of bi-levels and split levels — the two forms that defined 1960 building — with a few ranchers and colonials among them, in three-, four- and occasionally five-bedroom layouts. Both forms do the same thing in different ways: they separate living space from sleeping space by half a flight rather than a full one, which keeps a house feeling open while still zoning it. The bi-levels put a full lower level of finished living space under the main floor, and the split levels stack three or four half-levels so that a family room, a bedroom wing and the main living area all sit apart without a real staircase between any two. If you have never lived in one, they are worth walking before you rule them out — the practical square footage is greater than the elevation suggests.

The street plan is the other thing you notice. Tilford, Sherbrook, Surrey, Downing, Coronet, Hollyoke, Prospect, Lynnwood, Orono and Mardale curve and loop through the neighborhood with almost nothing running straight, which was deliberate — it slows traffic, it makes for irregular lots, and it means very few of these houses look directly at the one across the road. Lots here are generously sized for the era, with room enough that in-ground pools, sunrooms and enclosed rear rooms are a normal part of what trades rather than an exception.

Sixty-five years in, what has been updated is what separates two otherwise identical houses, and with a community this large the spread is wide. Modernized baths, replaced flooring, updated heating and air and finished lower levels all show up in listings here — and so do homes sold plainly as-is where the seller will make no repairs and offer no credits, pool included. Both come to market in this neighborhood regularly. At this age the question is never the floor plan, which you can read off a sheet; it is what has actually been done and what has been deferred, which you cannot.

For comparison elsewhere in the township, Broadmoor is the larger seventies neighborhood on the same postmark with bigger colonials, Catalina Hills is the other 1960 community and shares this one's ranch-and-split-level character, and Glendora is the nearest section with a similar feel. Gloucester Township ranch homes covers single-floor living township-wide. On location, this corner of the township sits close to the PATCO Speedline, which is the practical Philadelphia commute and a real advantage over the parts of the township that depend on Route 42 alone. The recently sold homes across Gloucester Township are the clearest read on where these are landing.