BEACH NOTES ... October 19, 2011 ... Ocean City, New Jeersey

Buying A Shore Property ... in Ocean City, New Jersey

(The third in a series of blog postings about buying a shore property in Ocean City, New Jersey.)

Let's reveiw each property category because each one is somewhat different in so many ways.  Let's cover the "single family" property category in this posting.  We find at the present date 184 active single family sale listings throughout Ocean City, New Jersey ... with the leading area being the Northend and Gardens with 54 or about 29% of the total market in single family sale listings.

Throughout the 2006 through 2011 time frame the single family sale listing market never got much higher than about 250 (possibly a bit lower than that figure).  In other words, the market was fairly stable even during a period of less activity.  The major problem related to the higher end singles (over $1 million) where the market really slowed down for quite some time ... only becoming a bit more active in the past few years.  We also saw a number of new construction single family properties in a "short-sale status" which tended to cause some price point problems. 

Overall, the single family property category, which is mostly represented by families not investors, remained a somewhat stable entity during the time frame mentioned above.  There has slowly been more activity in the past few years ... slowly clearing out the $500,000 range, than the $600,000, etc.  At this point in time, it is very difficult to find a property under $1 million in the Gardens area on the ocean-side of the Gardens Parkway ... that area closer to the ocean and the beach.  They still exist, but in many cases the renovation work required can be a challenging situation.

Returning to the total number (184 active single family properties) right now, we find a median price range of $768,700 and an average price range of $1,267,219.  Of course, different areas of Ocean City support different price ranges due to ocean and bay locations, building condition, and summer rental potential, etc.

As of today, about 155 single family properties have been sold in 2011 with a median sold price of $585,000 and an average sold price of $756,613 ... with 25 properties selling over $1 million and another 10 selling in the $990s to avoid the $10,000 tax point for the buyers over $1 million.

The single family property category has remained a stable one, and it continues to attract buyers.    dap