All Housing Market Trend Reports Are Not Equal!

All Housing Market Trend Reports Are Not Equal! 

The Jersey Shore means many places to many people.  It could be a family vacation home on Long Beach Island or a bungalow in Ocean Gate.

Ask anyone who lives here, they won’t tell you I’m from north or south Jersey.  They’ll tell you they live ‘down the shore’.

This presents a problem when examining housing market trends in New Jersey.  Ocean County (my part of the Jersey Shore) is poorly represented in the data.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR®) uses local market trend reports, but how accurate are they?

Well consider NAR® reports only four categories for NJ housing market trends.  

·        The Atlantic City region, covering Atlantic County.  

·        The Newark-Union region which includes Essex, Hunterdon, Morris, Sussex, and Union counties. 

·        The Trenton Ewing Region which covers only Mercer County.  

·        The Edison Region, which in addition to covering Ocean County, includes Middlesex, Monmouth, and Somerset counties.

Count them…only 11 counties.  Problem is that New Jersey has 21 counties.  Basing a housing market trend analysis on these mismatched groups is misleading.

That is the basic problem with national and regional housing market trend reports.  Ocean County at the Jersey Shore isn’t anything like Somerset County.  Everything from home prices, income and employment (or unemployment) is different.

The median home price in Somerset County in December, 2011 was $325,200 while it was $226,000 here in Ocean County. 

If you further magnify the housing reports to focus on Little Egg Harbor at the Jersey Shore, the median home price was $157,200 at the end of 2011.

Little Egg Harbor 2011 Home Sale Prices

So if you’re thinking about moving to southern Ocean County at the Jersey Shore, call Little Egg Harbor REALTOR® Laura Giannotta at 609-384-6121.

Let’s look at the individual towns; Barnegat, Little Egg Harbor, Manahawkin or Tuckerton.  We’ll examine recent home sales, the homes for sale and determine the LOCAL housing market trends at the Jersey Shore.  

When we do, I think you’ll find this is a great time to purchase a home at the Jersey Shore!

Subscribe to this blog, I’ll be examining market trends in Little Egg Harbor and other southern Ocean County communities!