By Allison Pries | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com   If you’re a renter in Jersey City, we salute you. You’re paying the highest rent prices in the entire country, according to a report conducted by listings service Rent.com. And you saw the third largest increase in rent prices, year over year, in the United State. The average rent in Jersey City jumped from $3,308 in 2021 to $5,500 in 2022. That’s an increase of 66.25%. Your neighbors in Hoboken also made the list of the Top 10 highest rents in the country, clocking in at No. 7 with an average rent bill of $4,264, which increased 21.4 ..read more

Mortgage rates are rising, as are home prices. Here’s what buyers and sellers should know now, according to Nadia Evangelou. The housing affordability crunch is here — with mortgage rates continuing to rise (see the lowest rates you can qualify for here) at the same time that housing prices do. So – as part of our series where we ask prominent economists and real estate pros their take on the housing market now – we talked to Nadia Evangelou. She’s the senior economist and director of forecasting at the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and focuses on regional and local m ..read more

By Allison Pries | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com   Anyone who has shopped for a house in this red-hot market can tell you, there aren’t many to choose from. The bidding wars and sky-high prices that have been the norm for the past two years were driven largely by the low inventory of homes for sale. But the latest figures for new home listings show a 41% gain in new listings from February to March. Statewide, 9,281 homes hit the market in March, versus 6,566 new listings in February, according to the most recent data available from New Jersey Realtors. The biggest increases were in Mi ..read more

By Karsten Moran for The New York Times During the pandemic, the Essex County township has attracted city buyers with its open space and relatively affordable housing — all less than 20 miles from Midtown. Living in a Brooklyn apartment with two young children in the middle of the pandemic, Megan Melamed, 41, and Alex Abell, 39, started their search for a suburban home in Maplewood, N.J. But the couple, both social workers, soon realized it was out of their price range, so they turned to the nearby Essex County township of West Orange, where they eventually bought a 1915 house with four ..read more

By The Tamima Team New Jersey home prices are set to rise 6 percent this year, a modest but more typical increase after a 27 percent increase over the last two years, assuming the war in Ukraine and attendant higher energy costs and inflationary pressures don’t push the U.S. and world economies into a recession. That’s according to NJ housing market maven Jeffrey Otteau, president of The Otteau Group, who spoke to real estate industry professionals attending his spring housing market seminar this week. “We continue to be in a period of home price escalation. We expect that to continue into thi ..read more

By Martha C. White Plan to buy a house in 2022? The good news is that conditions won’t rapidly get out of control the way they did last year. The bad news is that supply remains tight and prices are still on an upswing — and the likelihood of higher mortgage rates looms on the horizon. Real estate pros say the real estate market this year won’t match the fever pitch it reached in 2021, and the pace of home sales this year will be far less frenzied. “As we move through the year, we will see slower sales activity,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Re ..read more

A common practice in real estate is coming under new scrutiny because of concerns about discrimination. And one state has made it illegal. By Candace Jackson Dec. 17, 2021 When Dashini Jeyathurai was shopping for a home in Berkeley, Calif., last spring, the market was at a fever pitch. Most homes in the area were receiving multiple offers — sometimes a dozen or more — and many were selling for as much as 50 percent over the asking price. So when Ms. Jeyathurai and her husband, Byron White, found a home they wanted to make an offer on, they did what many others do: They wrote a letter ..read more

BY  LANCE LAMBERT Amid the housing frenzy this summer, U.S. home prices notched their largest one-year uptick (19.9%) in tabulated history—coming in well above the high-water mark of 14.1% set in the lead-up to the 2008 crisis. To keep up with rising home prices, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are expected to announce later this month a sharp increase in the size of home loans that can be federally-backed conventional conforming loans. According to the Wall Street Journal, mortgage firms will begin to offer federally-backed mortgages of ..read more

Mounting inflation & economic recession seen hurting prices in 2023 By The Tamima Team Overall New Jersey home prices will continue rising through 2022, but are expected to fall in 2023 as inflation and/or a possible recession take the bloom off the housing market.  That’s according to NJ real estate guru Jeffrey Otteau, president of The Otteau Group, whom we heard speak last week.  After climbing 12 pct in 2020, NJ home prices could rise as much as 15 pct this year before falling back to “a more normal pace” of 5 pct next year, he said. Many of the near-term positive factors buo ..read more

Bill Conerly Senior Contributor, Forbes The current housing boom will flatten in 2022—or possibly early 2023—when mortgage interest rates rise. There is no bubble to burst, though prices may retreat from panic-buying highs. The boom produced some frantic buying, bids in excess of asking prices, and plenty of worry among would-be homeowners. But this has not been a bubble. A bubble is not simply rising prices, but demand not justified by fundamental economic factors. The key to the buying boom has been low mortgage rates plus a shift in desired housing type. Mortgage rates hit what ..read more