How was the real estate market in Ocean County, NJ, in the first half of 2011? Well, that depends; were you looking to sell, looking to buy or “just looking”? Before we answer these questions, let’s LOOK at the numbers. The chart below shows everything (Single Family Homes, Condos, Adult Communities, etc.) that CLOSED/SOLD, in Ocean County, during the first six months of 2011:
Ocean County First Half of 2011
Rumor has it that Ocean County, NJ, is second only to Florida when it comes to “Adult Communities” and “Retirement Homes”. But, exactly how many Adult Communities and Retirement Homes are we talking about? According to the Ocean County Department of Planning, as of January 2010, there were 90 “Adult Communities” with a combined total of 65, 049 units in Ocean County, NJ.
Welcome to the Renaissance!
According to the Ocean County Department of Senior Services, Manchester Township leads the pack with 15 Adult Communities, followed by Brick Township with 12 and a three way tie for third with 9 Adult Communities each (Berkeley Township/Jackson Township/Toms River Township). For the complete list of Adult Communities in Ocean County, download the one page PDF here!
Six months ago, I recorded my predictions for the Ocean County Housing Market in 2011. To date, that video has been our most viewed video on our YouTube Channel. Just the other day, we received the following comment on said video:
The brief recovery in…2009…has now been entirely snuffed out, and the average American home now costs 33% less than it did in 2007. The fall in house prices in the Depression was 31%, and prices took 19 years to recover. Prices are back to their 2002 levels…”The national index fell 4.2% over the first quarter alone, and is down 5.1% compared to its year-ago level,” David Blitzer, the chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices, said.
—The Independent 1 June 2011 MrBloograss 2 days ago
Distressed Inventory
Our friends at Keeping Current Matters just wrote an excellent piece on The Impact of Distressed Properties on Neighboring Values. We, here at Coldwell Banker Flanagan Realty, have been warning our Ocean County residents about the “Shadow Inventory” since the beginning of the year. The BIG QUESTION has always been, just when will all of these distressed properties come to market? According to The KCM Crew, we should expect to see larger numbers of distressed homes coming on the market over the next 6 months in Ocean County, NJ.
Welcome to the Renaissance!
Last month we reported about the Ocean County Adult Community Real Estate Market for the First Quarter of 2011. This month we decided to take a “snapshot” of a specific Adult Community each week and we are beginning with the Renaissance in Manchester.
For a comprehensive look at most of the Retirement Villages in Northern Ocean County, NJ, check out this “White Paper”.
Manchester is home to a number of Adult Communities and Retirement Villages, including those located in the Whiting section of the township. What makes the Renaissance stand out from the crowd?
In 2010, 49 homes sold at an average sales price of $284,000 in the Renaissance. The average sales price for all of the Adult Communities in Manchester for 2010 was $95,000.
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR): Existing-home sales1, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, increased 3.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.10 million in March from an upwardly revised 4.92 million in February, but are 6.3 percent below the 5.44 million pace in March 2010. Sales were at elevated levels from March through June of 2010 in response to the home buyer tax credit.
Graphs property of FORTUNE!
Shawn Tully, editor-at-large for FORTUNE Magazine offered this optimistic and powerful argument why now is an excellent time to invest in real estate. Tully opens his argument by introducing us to Mike Castleman, the founder and CEO of a company called Metrostudy. What Metrostudy does, and does well, is collect the number of homes that are vacant and for sale in each city, and the number of months it takes to sell all of them.
Today Castleman is witnessing an extraordinary reversal of the new-home glut that helped sink prices just a few years ago. In the 41 cities Metrostudy covers, a total of 78,000 houses are now either vacant and for sale, or under construction. That’s less than one-fourth of the 343,000 units in those two categories at the peak of the frenzy in mid-2006, and well below the level of a decade ago. “If we had anything like normal levels of buying, those houses would sell in 2½ months,” says Castleman. “We’d see an incredible shortage. And that’s where we’re heading.”
