Younger, middle-class buyers can now afford homes near the beach that were once out of their reach.

 

Posted by Teresa at MSN Real Estate on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 12:42 PM

We've heard a lot about how homes are more affordable in many places than they have been in decades.

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That's good news for middle-class buyers and young people who had been priced out of homes on the Jersey Shore. Now they can party with Snooki, if they really want to.

 

With price drops of 15% to 40% in the towns along New Jersey's 130 miles of shoreline, property "down the shore" is more affordable than it has been in years, reports Josh Lederman of The Associated Press.

 

John Holland and his girlfriend, Lauren Rhatigan, bought a home in the community of Ship Bottom, within walking distance of the beach, for $340,000, after renting for three years. "We weren't even looking. We were riding our bikes and we just saw something," Holland told Lederman.

 

There are plenty of homes for sale, though not quite as many as there were last summer, Alan J. Heavens reports at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Still, at the current rate of sales, it would take 20 months to sell all the houses and 31 months to sell the condos.