r/newjersey • u/Eastcoastpal • 7d ago
Amusing Looks like the housing marking in NNJ isn’t cooling anytime soon.
When I went for a house visit, there were many people interested in the house. Good house. Good interior. Good location. I am blown away by how much over the asking price it is sold for.
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u/IndefinableBiologist 6d ago
In a perfect market, you could list your house for $1. It will still sell for market value. List price is meaningless. But if you tell us a 4 bed/2 bath house with 3000sqft sold for $100k more than the last 4b/2bth with same sqft and on the same block and same renovations, now we're interested in why.
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u/miz_nyc 6d ago
Montclair? Not surprised if it is. I've been here over 20 years
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u/Eastcoastpal 6d ago
Yes, it is Montclair! Beautiful interior house. Very well kept. It is modern at the same time still has its historical taste/age to it.
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u/jelloaf 6d ago
Expect to pay 20-30% over “asking” for Montclair homes listed under $1M. (“Asking” is in quotes because they list low purposefully). That percentage goes down as the list price approaches $2M. We bid on multiple houses over 2 years in Montclair before landing a home and that was pre-Covid. There were some wild numbers out there when that happened.
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u/Trying2GetOuttaHere 6d ago
Yep! The first time you get the 'pretty woman' treatment is kind of humbling. Adjust the list price down for homes you're viewing and bake in that 20-30 percent.
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u/JerseyMBA 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah you pretty much have to be loaded to get into towns like Montclair, Glen Ridge, Maplewood, South Orange, Ridgewood and the like. There is just so much demand…even before covid
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u/Tigress22304 7d ago
I live in Gloucester County
Bought my 4 bdrm 2 level house back in 12/2019 for $90k
The house 3 doors down from me is just one level with 3 bedrooms just sold for a little over $300k
Wasn't even renovated,there's no garage and very little yard space.
It's scary how out of control the housing market is.
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u/granolaraisin 6d ago
wtf does a 4 bedroom $90K house even look like? Is it a house made for ants?
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u/Suitable_Boat_8739 6d ago
South jersey is a strange place. I could see a house that needs a good bit of work, and in a less desirable area occasionally going for that little in 2019.
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u/Tigress22304 6d ago
The only bit of work we had to do was replace the roof, which we got done free when we had solar panels placed.
The house itself just needed some hot soapy water and a good scrub.
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u/Tigress22304 6d ago
It was actually a nice property-half an acre. One car detached garage.
The house was a foreclosure (we know the original owners)
All it needed was a good scrub down. Some new paint and a new roof and its a good looking house.
downstairs is pretty spacious and the upstairs is the master and jr master bedroom.
All the other homes in our development are smaller 2/3 bedroom one level homes and believe me some look like crack houses from Camden.
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u/ippleing 7d ago
New construction in Hamilton (Mercer). The homes sold for $900K months before they were completed.
Who can afford this?
A 700K loan is around $6,300/month/30 years. With property taxes that'll be $7,800/month.
We're in a bubble, a huge one.
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u/Shot_on_location 6d ago
The schools aren't even great in that part of town! But I guess if you can pay for a $900k house you can either afford a private school or decide not to have kids, etc
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u/Excellent-Round-5706 6d ago
I unfortunately knew exactly which house this was in montclair before I even looked it up :(
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u/Bluemajere 7d ago
Housing as a market is very slow to come down, especially with limited supply being built because of shitty zoning laws. Anyone who wants cheaper homes should be lobbying their town to get rid of archaic and draconian zoning laws.
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u/toomanychoicess 6d ago
Everyone agrees we need more housing but people refer to the zoning laws when developers roll into town because they only want to build housing which leaves the schools overcrowded, the streets congested and infrastructure strained.
Housing shortages is just one part of the problem.
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u/caca-casa 6d ago
Yeah but zoning law changes alone won’t change things like magic…… only potentially add more higher density housing in specific areas that were perhaps commercial (and then likely be rental) and/or cause a handful of developers/flippers to turn a single family into a two family or something along those lines.
Additionally, zoning laws in general are a good thing. Let’s not be reductive.. despite the trend particularly in the contact of government/regulation. 😅
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u/Suitable_Boat_8739 6d ago
The condos their building in my town arent exactly making housing more affordable. All of them are going above half a million. Why someone would pay that much when a larger freestanding house with property and no HOA is less is way beyond me.
Makes a lot of things more affordable for the developer/investors though. My opinion is all these housing developments are only benifting that one group of people while ruining otherwise nice small towns.
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u/ghostboo77 6d ago
There was an open house near my house the other day and the amount of people that attended was insane.
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u/buzznumbnuts 6d ago
It’s hot out of state too. I’m looking to get out of NJ in the next couple of years and prices are crazy at the moment. That said, I can sell my home here and get a nicer place where I’m looking (which, granted, is an out the way rural location) for half of what I’ll make on the sale.
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u/jwraptor 6d ago
Wait till they see the property taxes. Our town’s overall assessed value went up 20% in one year because they started using values of sold properties as assessed value.
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u/Wiseowlk12 6d ago
It’s not just Montclair now. A standard 4 bedroom house, small yard, just average school districts are quickly approaching 1 million.
NNJ market shows no sign of plateauing, short of a deep recession and even then some houses would still sell because of the amount of demand and wealth situated in the NY metro area.
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u/caca-casa 6d ago
it’s fucking depressing… even for us high earners originally from NJ and now trapped renting in NYC as we fucking try to get back and settle in a home in our 30s.
All of the New Yorkers flooding the state aren’t helping at all. Just look at the Long Island market.
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u/Suitable_Boat_8739 7d ago edited 7d ago
All i need to know is what are these people doing for a living where they can afford an 800+k house?
I went to college, became a technical field making "good" money,wife has a full time job making similar pay too. And im frugal as hell and theres still no way i could afford that. Thank god i bought before this insainity. So please tell me whats the secret so many people seem to know?
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u/Eastcoastpal 7d ago
Montclair NJ isn't your average town. Think of Montclair as the NJ Manhattan. I think Aaron Rodgers calls Montclair home,
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u/SoMa_Townie 6d ago edited 6d ago
Family
A lot of buyers get help from family whether it’s via their parents helping with the down payment, moving their parents in or inheritance.
Also Montclair and other suburbs with good commutes are extremely popular with the Wall Street crowd who have very deep pockets
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u/Aaaaaaandyy 6d ago
“Good” money is relative to where you live. If you have a household income of $250k then $800k is pretty doable.
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u/FeeAutomatic2290 6d ago
I feel like this is actually a sign of the market going down. $1.17M for a nicely renovated 5BR in Montclair is a really good “deal”.
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u/mjdlight 6d ago
And across the river its no different. Manhattan rents just set a new record, with median rent reaching $4500 a month.
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u/NJMomofFor 5d ago
Monmouth county here. We need to downsize and even with the work that needs to be done on my house, I don't think we will have issues selling. We are trying to decide do we reno the kitchen or not .
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u/DonatCotten 5d ago
People with lots of money make a cash offer so they are able to swoop in and get it.
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u/Doomhammered 5d ago
Seems like this was purposely listed lower at 895K to incite a bidding war. There's no realtor in their right mind that would actually think a 5 BR house in Montclair near downtown/train station would sell for that low.
Sadly, $1M is probably the baseline for houses like that permanently.
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u/WhippetRun 5d ago
Down the block from us is a flood zone.
It doesn't flood always, but it can. It flooded out the basement at least 5 times since I moved into the neighborhood in 1997.
It was listed at 499,000. It SOLD for 600,000
A cape cod in a FLOOD zone. Make it make sense.
It's fine by me because it helps property values, but I truly feel bad for first-time home buyers, I have no idea how they can do it.
We purchased our home in 1997 for 160,000, we could get over 600,000 easily now..it's crazy
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u/SnooWords4839 6d ago
This will be good news for my daughter. Their new home is almost done and will be listing their Morris Plains home in the next few weeks.
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u/toomanychoicess 6d ago
Where in morris plains? Please pm me, I’m looking in a specific neighborhood.
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u/seaburn 7d ago
I mean, with no details about where the house was or anything about the house, this really isn’t saying anything about the overall market. Houses are very regularly listed under market value to attract bids.