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Just posting this thread for conversational purposes and not from a (as a matter of fact) point of view.
I live in a working class neighborhood of Middlesex County. As of late, I have noticed that prices in my town, which is neither a desirable nor a complete dump town, have gone up and sales are going rather faster than usual. In my quest to find the reasons for such a change, I started digging prices in other areas. Since I bought my house in 2012 and shopped around in townships like Cranford, Metuchen, Westfield, and others, I somewhat remember the prices "back then". Just for fun, I kept reviewing prices every now and then in the same townships. So, within the context of home prices in the last six months, do you feel that prices have gone insanely higher in fairly recent months in your town? Have prices gone up in Bergen County and "good" towns in Union and Middlesex gone up so high too quick to the point of pushing up prices in peripheral areas?
Houses around $350k got 10 offers before first open house. Went to contract after first open house.
That's amazing! I don't have the insights to determine if the actual state of the economy/confidence or a unrelated to the economy bubble is building up once again. That said, my skin crawls when I see average homes prices going for $500K - $750K with property taxes averaging $12K to $15K per year. And I can't help to wonder if people are going house poor by doing this. Or maybe salaries have kept up with inflation (sarcasm).
I've been pretty actively monitoring Ridgewood, Glen Rock and Fair Lawn for the last 3 years. In the last year, at the entry level (say < 600k), prices seem to have gone up. At the same time, I'm not seeing much by way of increases, and maybe even some slight decreases, at the higher end (say > 1m).
...my skin crawls when I see average homes prices going for $500K - $750K with property taxes averaging $12K to $15K per year. And I can't help to wonder if people are going house poor by doing this. Or maybe salaries have kept up with inflation (sarcasm).
No, they're not going house-rich / cash-poor -- if that were the case, we'd already be seeing the mortgage defaults.
Last peak was '05, then crash in '08 -- 3 years.
This upswing started in '16 -- so if it were a bubble, we'd already be seeing weakness. We're not. As you observed, just the opposite.
It's all about Manhattan. Seen their skyline lately? Skyscrapers being built every day, up up up.
NJ is getting the spillover effect, 40 mile radius.
Absolutely. The few benefitting from the so-called “economic recovery” have been driving prices up everywhere, but especially in towns commutable to NYC.
And that’s forcing people who don’t have as much money to move further out... where prices that were lower have been driven up... forcing people living in those towns to move further out...
I’m getting dizzy.
I lived in Bergen County most of my life. I wanted to buy a house in Bergen County. It simply got too expensive. So I moved out to Western Morris County, where I got in early and got a good deal on my new construction townhouse. My options were...
Get a comparable new construction townhouse in an “A” Bergen County town (Ridgewood, Woodcliff Lake, etc.) for $800,000+. Not in this or the next six lifetimes for me...
Get a comparable new construction townhouse in a “B” Bergen County town (Fair Lawn, Rutherford, etc.) for $600,000+, or, for the same money and after a lot of searching, get a train wreck of a house in an “A” town. Knock off $25,000 or so for comparable Eastern Morris County towns or Wayne. Still ain’t happenin’ for me...
Get a comparable new construction townhome in an “A” Western Morris County town for $550,000, or a “B” Western Morris County town for $400,000. Knock a buck fifty off for the train wrecks in those towns.
Well, I got the new construction townhome in the “B” Western Morris County town, and I’m thrilled with the decision. In the 18 months or so since I closed, the house has gone up in value approximately $50,000.
Not a bad ROI.
But it’s horrible how many people are being left behind because of the outrageous housing prices.
My parents came very close to buying a house in “working class, not desirable, but not a dump” Dumont in 1982. The asking price was $58,000 ($151,927.54 in 2019 dollars).
They decided the house was too expensive for them to afford. If they weren’t both long-deceased, housing prices in the area today would have likely killed them. That house has to be worth at least $400,000 today.
I was reviewing some real estate data at work for a couple of different counties. The average single family home sale price in Bergen County was unchanged when comparing January 2019 sales to January 2018 sales. Essex County was down 11% in the same time period. That’s all I can remember off the top of my head.
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