The newspapers are full of doom and gloom with stories about the real estate market. They make generalizations about foreclosures, prices dropping, the bottom hasn't hit yet and so on. It would be nice if just once they mentioned all the good things that are happening. My husband, Douglas, and I own Jewell Real Estate Agency with offices in Wildwood Crest and Swainton. Good things are in store for the South Jersey Shore area. Douglas is the writer in the family and in the following paragraghs he highlights many of the positive things Cape May County and Atlantic County have to look forward to.
Having been a mathematics major in college, I'm understandably enamored with numbers. Talk is talk, but numbers give substance. There's nothing like good, hard numbers to bring a topic into focus, to cut down on speculation and misleading conclusions.
Let's see if the demographics support that the real estate market in Cape May County will see another boom. Not just a rebound, which is already happening, but a boom! It's an interesting prospect, one that many insiders like myself support and others just can't fathom.
The state of New Jersey has a population of 8.724 million people. The median age is 38.2 years, with 12.9 percent of folks 65 or older. The median household income is $64,470 and the homeownership rate is 67.3 percent, meaning two-thirds live in a home they own. Of adults, 33.4% have a college Bachelor's degree, and 12.4% have even higher degrees.
What this all means is that New Jerseyans, on the whole, are pretty well off. The median household income in the entire country is $48,451, so we're a third higher. New Jersey has the highest percentage of millionaires in the USA. Throw in metropolitan Philadelphia and suburban New York City, and there's a lot of affluence in our region. All this fuels the second home market, which comprises half of all properties in Cape May County.
Experts keep tossing out that 40,000 new employees will be needed in the Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland county region. Most of this is centered on Atlantic City, whose 11 casinos already employ 40,788 people. Several casino expansions are in the works, with at least three new casinos slated.
MGM Mirage will be breaking ground within a year on its $5 billion megaresort, located on 72 acres next to the Borgata. This largest resort in AC, scheduled to open in 2012, will feature 50 stories, 3,000 hotel rooms, a 7,500 seat concert arena, and a half million square feet of space for retail, restaurants, and entertainment. Revel Entertainment has already broken ground on a $2 billion casino complex, located on the strip next to the Showboat, slated to open in 2010. Pinnacle Entertainment, which tore down the aging Sands Casino last October, should have their new $1.5 billion casino in operation by 2012.
With 128-acre Bader Field going out to bid in the next year, the possibility of another mega-casino, or up to four smaller casinos, will add to the need for new employees. So where will all these new employees live? Rounded off, the current yearround populations of the three counties are Atlantic 250,000, Cumberland 150,000, and Cape May 100,000.
Let's suppose that keeping with the statistics, two-thirds of the 40,000, or 26,680 will purchase their own home. Forget the island communities, where summer folks have driven up prices. I'm talking about Longport, Ventnor, Margate, Ocean City, Sea Isle, Avalon, Stone Harbor, Cape May, etc - places where a single family home would be prohibitively expensive for a working family employed by casinos, retail, or restaurants.
That leaves the mainland towns. Arguably, Egg Harbor, Galloway and Hamilton townships, all Atlantic County towns situated in the Pinelands "growth zone", would pick up the brunt of the new residents. But many families will look to live a little farther from the hustle and bustle of the AC area.
Cape May County, just a 20-35 mile commute, fits the bill. The mainland communities - Lower, Middle, Dennis, and Upper townships, plus Woodbine - currently have 822 single family homes listed for sale. With the number of housing developments already approved in those towns doubling the number, that's about 1,600 available homes. An influx of 40,000 people over the next half dozen years or so will surely result in most of those homes being snapped up.
In the world of supply and demand, especially in real estate, this demand will create more building and higher prices on the mainland. Doesn't that add up?
Throw in the seven 20+ story hotel/resort projects on the books in Wildwood now awaiting NJDEP approval, and a couple big resorts upcoming in North Wildwood and Diamond Beach, and you have the recipe for another real estate boom. Numbers don't lie.
To learn more about the Cape May County real estate market, visit our website at http://www.jewellrealestateagency.com/
http://www.mountainmanandcitygirl.com - our real estate blog featuring not only real estate articles but topics like travel, politics and lifestyle.
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