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Real Estate
in Spring Lake NJ
Real Estate in Spring Lake New Jersey is a very valuable commodity. It’s one of the most exclusive New
Jersey Communities and probably the most exclusive community by the New Jersey Shore. The proximity to the beach make this
small shore community a beautiful place to live or vacation.
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Spring Lake
NJ News
Market slowdown
From Phillyburbs.com
By JOHN WILEN
The Intelligencer
If there's any doubt in your mind that the local real estate
market has slowed, ask a seller.
“It seems like people are coming and looking, but
nobody's making an offer,” said Terri Kiriakidi, who has been trying
to sell her mother's Warminster house since June.
Or a real estate agent.
“I've never seen anything like this in my life,”
said Herman Petrecca, a real estate agent with ReMax Associates in
Warminster. “I've got a bunch of properties sitting on the
market.”
Supporting these anecdotal assessments are cold, hard numbers,
mined from the Multiple Listing Service used by real estate agents to track
and record home sales and provided by Prudential, Fox & Roach Realtors.
Those numbers — all from the 43 municipalities of
Central and Upper Bucks and Eastern Montgomery
counties — show that it took 86 percent longer to sell a house in August
than it did one year ago. They show that the number of homes sold in
August, 521, was off 25 percent from a year ago. And they show that the
local inventory of homes for sale hit an all-time high in August of 3,565,
almost double December 2004's level of 1,814.
The numbers also show the area's median home-sales price hit
an all-time high of $325,000 in August. But that median price was only 1.6
percent higher than the price in August 2005, one of the smallest
year-over-year increases in recent memory and well below the year-over-year
price increases homeowners enjoyed at the height of the boom. In May 2005,
for instance, the area's median home price rose 17 percent from the
previous May.
Many descriptive phrases are used to describe the area's
current housing market. But all spell one word: slowdown.
“I think we're seeing an extremely balanced
market,” said Sue Thompson, vice president and sales manager in
Prudential, Fox & Roach's Doylestown office.
“I think things have leveled off,” said Bob Gavin
of Robert G. Gavin Realtors in Upper Black Eddy.
That leveling can best be seen in the situation of a seller
such as Kiriakidi, who recently reduced the price of her mom's four-bedroom
house from $349,900 to $309,900, to no avail.
“Nobody's even offering anything,” Kiriakidi said.
“I don't understand.”
Fortunately, Kiriakidi is not in a hurry to sell. Her mother
is having a house built in Florida.
Once she moves, Kiriakidi may renovate her Warminster house to improve its
sales prospects.
“I guess maybe we need to do that,” Kiriakidi
said.
Joe Bosack of Plumstead found a buyer for his
2,200-square-foot colonial, but only after he accepted a contingency offer.
In other words, the buyer agreed to pay $410,000 — $19,000 less than
Bosack's original asking price — but that offer was contingent on the
buyer in turn finding someone to purchase his house.
“Normally, in a real hot real estate market, you'd pass
on an offer like that,” Bosack said.
But not now.
“We noticed the market had started to slow down,”
Bosack said. “I think you have to be a little more open to those
sorts of things.”
Bosack put his house on the market in early May and reached
the contingency agreement with his buyer in mid-June. His buyer didn't sell
his house until mid-August. That means Bosack and his wife will go to
settlement in about two weeks to complete their four-plus month
home-selling odyssey.
Barbara Shoap of Cheltenham found a buyer for her mother's Northeast Philadelphia twin but only after dropping
the price from $198,900 to $185,000. She listed the house for sale in March
but didn't find a buyer until August.
“As soon as we put it on the market, the market slowed
to a stop,” Shoap said.
She described the time it took to sell the house as
“aggravating.”
Kiriakidi, Bosack and Shoap aren't the only ones taking steps
to get their properties sold. Petrecca, the real estate agent, is dropping
his commission on sales to entice buyers' agents.
“I am doing it because I'm seeing that I have to do
something to get these houses sold,” Petrecca said. “They're
not moving. The calls are not coming in like they were a year ago.”
Thompson and Gavin think we're near the bottom of the market.
Prices may fall a bit from their current levels, Thompson said, but are
likely to stabilize from there. At some point, people who have been sitting
on the fence, waiting for prices to come down, will start jumping in and
buying houses, she said.
Thompson said coastal areas are usually a harbinger of the
future in inland areas such as Bucks and Montgomery counties. And the good news is
that after falling, prices have stabilized at the New Jersey Shore,
Thompson said.
Gavin thinks new home developers and real estate investors are
being pinched the most right now. Much of the slowdown in price
appreciation, increases in inventory and amount of time it takes to sell a
house is due to sluggish sales in new, high-end housing developments, Gavin
argued.
“I think that most of these new developments will
probably suffer the most,” Gavin said.
The only homeowners likely to lose money in the current market
are those who bought last year and are selling now, Thompson said, noting
that price appreciation in previous years ensures most homeowners have
equity in their houses.
“If they bought their home any time prior to last year,
they're still going to make money,” Thompson said. “But those
multiple offers of the past are just that.”
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Tip #19
Home Buying Tip, Online Searching:
Searching online is a very effective way to look for real estate in New Jersey, or anywhere
for that matter. Good websites
allow you to search through multiple MLS’s so you can cover a wide
range. For example here you can Search for NJ Real Estate.
After you find the house you are interested
in you can inquiry with the real estate agency to find out more
information or to arrange an appointment to view the house.
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Tip #18
Home Selling Tip, Targeting Out Of State:
When you sell your home you sometimes have to put yourself in the
potential buyers’ shoes. In New Jersey many home buyers are from the
surrounding area, like New York or Pennsylvania.
Knowing this can allow your agent to
market your house more effectively.
If he/she will advertise in a New York publication they can describe
the proximity to NY. This allows
your potential Buyer Base to expand.
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