{"id":3437,"date":"2026-07-01T19:11:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=3437"},"modified":"2026-07-01T19:11:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:11:27","slug":"exclusive-njs-suburbs-are-in-a-full-blown-bidding-war-frenzy-with-houses-going-33-above-asking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=3437","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive | NJ\u2019s suburbs are in a full-blown bidding war frenzy \u2014 with houses going 33% above asking"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

New Jersey\u2019s suburban gold rush has no ceiling in sight, and buyers are paying whatever it takes.<\/p>\n

Read more Mitch McConnell was found \u2018unconscious\u2019 in DC home last month, may have suffered heart attack<\/a><\/p>\n

Forty-two Euclid Ave in Maplewood hit the market at $1,795,000. It sold for $2,279,000, a staggering 27% above ask. Down the road in South Orange, 376 Melrose Pl listed for $998,999 and closed at $1,332,200, a 33% premium.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These aren\u2019t outliers. They\u2019re the new normal across a stretch of Essex and Union County suburbs where inventory has all but evaporated and buyers are throwing caution, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the wind.<\/p>\n

Maplewood, South Orange and Montclair are leading the charge, with homes across the region averaging double digit percentages over asking price and spending under two weeks on the market before going under contract.<\/p>\n

The numbers, according to weekly market data compiled by Mark Slade of Keller Williams Midtown Direct Realty, tell the story clearly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maplewood\u2019s average sale price sits at $1.34 million as of late June, with buyers paying 15.6% over ask. South Orange isn\u2019t far behind at 16.2% over asking with an average sale price topping $1.27 million. Montclair, meanwhile, is running the hottest of the bunch, with buyers paying nearly 25% over list.<\/p>\n

Slade, who has tracked these markets since becoming a realtor in 2009, says the upward march has been remarkably steady.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen a down-trending year in Maplewood, South Orange or Montclair,\u201d he told The Post, adding that the last several years in particular have brought \u201cdramatic changes in the performance of the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pandemic supercharged an existing trend, according to Slade, who traces the appeal of these towns back to 1997, two years after Midtown Direct train service began running straight into Penn Station without a transfer in Hoboken.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when we started to see some movement, some significant movement and attraction to the area,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Slade has a name for what\u2019s happening now. He calls it \u201cvalue convergence equilibrium\u201d \u2014\u00a0 a theory built on the idea that Northern New Jersey buyers are catching up to what Westchester and Long Island commuters have paid for decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we now see is that more and more people as buyers, are recognizing that with their economics, they can afford more house for less money in Northern New Jersey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The buyers driving this frenzy aren\u2019t only fleeing Manhattan. Slade says most are also coming from Brooklyn, Hoboken and Queens, current apartment dwellers looking to trade up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNorthern New Jersey offers some of the best values as much as it may seem crazy for someone like me watching these prices grow by leaps and bounds,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s still a better value if you\u2019re looking for a 45 minute and under commute to the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basic economics explains the rest. Supply simply hasn\u2019t kept pace. Slade points to Maplewood specifically, a town of 25,000 residents with more than 5,500 single family homes, yet only a couple dozen actively listed at any given time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, that\u2019s just ridiculous,\u201d he said. He tracks a metric he calls a \u201chypermarket,\u201d where the number of homes under contract nearly doubles the number of active listings, a ratio he considers more telling than the traditional six month absorption rate used across the industry.<\/p>\n

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The demand has changed the character of these towns, longtime residents complain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slade says he\u2019s heard grumbling that the small town feel is being \u201csupplanted by more New York, impatient, higher end buyers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He offered an only half joking anecdote about downtown Maplewood\u2019s diagonal parking spots, where illegal U-turns into spaces happen constantly despite signage every 30 feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that today\u2019s buyers are much more affluent,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re even more time pressed, so to speak, which is why they\u2019re choosing these areas to live for the more manageable commutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Township meetings haven\u2019t been immune to the anxiety. After a record breaking sale in Maplewood\u2019s Hilton neighborhood last year, Slade recalls committee members raising concerns at the next public meeting about what runaway prices mean for longtime residents. Still, he sees the appreciation as a feature, not a bug, of homeownership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is real estate,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is what real estate is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Momentum tends to soften slightly as the year goes on, Slade says, a seasonal pattern he attributes half jokingly to what he calls \u201cbonus baby syndrome,\u201d when buyers flush with year end bonuses resolve to finally buy a house \u201cso we don\u2019t have to trip over the stroller.\u201d<\/p>\n

When buyers get priced out of one town, they simply move to the next rung down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Montclair shoppers frustrated by bidding wars often land in Maplewood. Maplewood buyers priced out end up in West Orange, where the year to date average sits at $763,000 with a 10.7% premium over ask, or Union, averaging around $600,000.<\/p>\n

Bidding wars, meanwhile, have become simply expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBidding wars are very much part of the current market scenario, given the limited number of homes for sale and the fact that the amount of buyers far outweighs the supply,\u201d Slade said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBuyer\u2019s should generally expect some type of bidding war.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He uses an ice cream metaphor to describe buyer psychology, borrowed from a Cold Stone Creamery portion chart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are three sizes of ice cream at Cold Stone Creamary, Like It, Love it and Gotta Have It!,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, if a buyer is in the Gotta Have It mode, their offer could likely blow everyone else away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Homes that have recently traded well above ask include 8 Colony Dr in West Orange, which sold for $1,178,000 against an $865,000 list, a 36% jump, and 35 Porter Pl in Montclair, which closed at $1,525,000 on a $1,395,000 ask, pricing out at 30% higher per square foot than the town average.<\/p>\n

Whether this run has a natural endpoint is another matter. Slade doesn\u2019t see one coming, short of the state \u201cbuilding a wall around Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Jersey remains the most densely populated state in the country, meaning new construction is largely limited to developers subdividing larger lots rather than building fresh inventory from scratch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Relief in the form of significantly lower mortgage rates also seems unlikely anytime soon, Slade says, leaving buyers to keep competing for a shrinking pool of homes in towns that offer what he still considers, even amid the chaos, the better deal.<\/p>\n

Read more 1 airman missing after MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter crashes in Arabian Sea where fleet is operating for Iran War<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Homes across Maplewood, South Orange and Montclair are selling up to 36% over asking as buyers flee New York City for more space and manageable commutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate"],"yoast_head":"\nExclusive | NJ\u2019s suburbs are in a full-blown bidding war frenzy \u2014 with houses going 33% above asking - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=3437\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exclusive | NJ\u2019s suburbs are in a full-blown bidding war frenzy \u2014 with houses going 33% above asking - 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