A personal note by Randy Rabney Spring Flowers A turbo charged market & Local Market Statistics by Fran Lichtman It’s St. Patrick’s Day and I’m making corned beef and cabbage for dinner. Growing up in NY corned beef for us was always thinly sliced on a rye bread with mustard. My grandfather would buy corned beef and pastrami almost every Sunday. A few years ago, we started making this St. Patrick’s Day dinner an annual event. We are grateful that it’s made easy by one of our favorite local markets: N&K Prime Marketplace | Butcher and European Marketplace | 1899 Sp ..read more

THE REAL ESTATE MARKET IN NOTHERN NJ by Fran Lichtman As March begins, I can report that the last 7 weeks have continued to see multiple offers and well over asking prices yet again. The open houses have been full and the majority of weekly listings last only one weekend. There is now another new and higher level of comps that exist in these local towns. Anyone who bet that it was a good idea to wait to purchase a home in the hopes that lower interest rates would prevail just lost that bet with rates inching up this past week. Hang in there…. Everyone needs a p ..read more

THE REAL ESTATE MARKET IN NOTHERN NJ by Fran Lichtman As the Super Bowl approaches, we are at a point where the spring market starts in earnest.  Over the past couple of weeks as inventory dribbled on to the market, we have already seen buyers out there in droves.  Open houses have been packed almost as if we were back in the Covid days.  It appears that while buyers are obviously not thrilled with the mortgage rates, they have accepted the reality and have been recently incentivized by the slight drop in these rates. Multiple offers are once again ..read more

Happy New Year to all our readers! We wanted to reach out today not only to give you our opinion on the current state of the market but to also let you know that if you are considering a sale of your property, we have a turnkey setup for helping with your efforts to get your home ready for the market. We offer staging services and have trusted service providers to help with all your needs. Call us in for a consultation now. It is never too early to begin the discussion and create the road map. MARKET UPDATE: As the year begins, as expected, we are starting to see new listings dribble on to the ..read more

The market remains quite vibrant despite the continuation of the rise in mortgage interest rates. In recent weeks we have seen a healthy increase in inventory. Buyers actually had a choice of properties in different price ranges, which is quite rare. This past week was pretty slow leading up to Memorial Day weekend, but even though the weather was beautiful, buyers who were serious about finding a home were out there looking.  We expect that the week of June 5 will bring a large number of properties to the market.  The expectation is that June will remain quite busy ..read more

THE REAL ESTATE MARKET IN NORTHERN NEW JERSEY Some good news around the neighborhoods this week! Slightly lower interest rates are in place following 5 straight weeks of modest declines.  We are down from the 7% high to around 6.28%.  This translates into a $125-150 savings per month in payments for the average buyer.    What is also encouraging is that this is the first week that we have seen a very nice uptick in new listings entering the market.  Just in Maplewood/South Orange alone there were about 18 new properties that hit the market.  This is a welcomed s ..read more

As anticipated, the buyers are out there in full force and the inventory remains restricted. This combination of factors sets up the perfect storm. Sellers who have their homes priced fairly and presented in their best light are seeing multiple offers.  The homes with newly renovated kitchens and baths are especially benefitting from the current boom in the market. Last week, 3 beautiful homes hit the market. One in each of West Orange, South Orange and Maplewood. The West Orange home was 3 beds and 2.1 baths listed at $625k. This was a brand new whole house renovation designed beautif ..read more

As expected, inventory has begun to slowly dribble on to the market. I went to see a new listing in Upper Gregory in West Orange yesterday priced at $575k.  It is a very nice- looking Tudor style home. The open house was mobbed. This was a true indication of how many buyers are out there who have been waiting for the new inventory to show up. Even though interest rates have risen dramatically, people still need places to live!  Another recent observation was that the higher end of the market ( $1.25-1.7 million) in Maplewood/South Orange also remains very strong. Not long ago sever ..read more

Resolutions…. Feels Like Groundhog Day! by Mary Ellen Dawkins It’s January and we all have an opportunity for a Fresh Start. I checked back to see what I wrote about last year and it was Resolutions! I didn’t expect to make any progress on my resolutions but let’s see how I did. Resolution 1 was to Open the Mail every day when it arrived. Did I succeed? Not really. We still have a huge pile of mail that sits in our entry way. I don’t like opening (and paying) bills. This resolution will stay on the list! Resolution 2 was to Eat More Vegetables. Did I succeed? We definitely ate more greens ..read more

THE REAL ESTATE MARKET IN NORTHERN JERSEY by Fran Lichtman Happy New Year to all of our readers! The spring market of 2023 is ready to start and I believe it will be an incredibly active one. Typically, potential sellers feel that the “spring” market begins in late March or April at the earliest. I want to remind all that the market begins by the latter part of January.  I realize that the last couple of years have been different in that there was no seasonality due to the pandemic. The market went crazy in May of 2020 and did not begin to let up until about May of 2022. About two we ..read more