Our growing ‘City of North Jersey’: How we got here and where we are going

It’s not surprising that Englewood chose to name its high school for Dwight Morrow, a city resident who was a U.S. senator, an ambassador to Mexico and a powerful Wall Street banker. However, Morrow’s most enduring influence might have come through a position that doesn’t even rate a mention in his Wikipedia entry.

Morrow served on the influential 10-member committee that fashioned the 1929 “Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs,” the first master plan for any city or region in the country. That multivolume agenda became a seminal blueprint for the growth of New York City and the entire metropolitan area, and, in the eyes of many, codified the strategy that perpetuated the city’s role of dominance on the world scene.

As it turned out, by virtually laying out the structure of roads that serves as the region’s circulatory system and projected path of development, it also helped to create something unanticipated. Call it the City of North Jersey, the place we live and work in now.
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The plan consisted of two parts: a highway system west of the Hudson and around New York City, and an economic transformation that turned New York City from an industrial-era engine comprising small manufacturers employing low-paid factory workers into a world-class city of concrete and glass office towers where banks, investment houses, insurance companies, real estate and legal firms did business and their mostly well-off workers lived.

These “clean” enterprises were the designated “highest and best uses” of the valuable real estate in Manhattan’s massive central business district. Spreading out from it in spokes and in concentric rings would be the highways — the plan paid scant attention to mass transit systems — that would filter factories and lower-priced residences through a megalopolis designed to serve Manhattan’s needs.

But a funny thing happened. North Jersey developed — in a big way, and pretty much according to the original highway design, tripling the population of the communities served by those highways since 1930.
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The highway grid in the plan looks much the way it appears today: A big peripheral highway, 287; highways sprouting from one existing Hudson River crossing (the Holland Tunnel) and five anticipated crossings (three eventually became reality), Routes 4, 46, 208, 3 and 280, 80 and 95; and four north-south highways, the New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway, Routes 17 and 9. Highways that fed into the George Washington Bridge and the Tappan Zee Bridge connected to the eastern half of the larger peripheral system that moved vehicular traffic around New York City.
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North Jersey adopted its own version of “highest and best use.” Single-family housing soaked up blank spaces between the highway grid. Regional malls sprawled along the intersections. Midrise commercial buildings and hotels went up along the highways and in the Meadowlands. High-rise apartments came to Fort Lee, Hackensack and northern Hudson County.

Pretty soon, North Jersey had the looks of, well, a city. Not the dense, concrete-and-glass, high-rise prototype that identifies most of the world’s modern cities, but a hybrid that mixes those elements with the expansive, haphazard collection of housing, offices and malls typical of American suburbs.
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To be sure, many pressures beyond the agenda of the 1929 plan pushed the development of the City of North Jersey. Already in place in 1930 were the industrial cities of Hudson, Bergen and Passaic counties. It was an era when Garfield was Bergen’s largest municipality, and Fairview was bigger than Paramus.

White flight, tax policies that favored home ownership over renting, the GI Bill and the rise of the automobile as the nation’s preferred form of mass transportation also encouraged the move out of the big cities to the more rural towns of North Jersey.

With the population growth, other development followed: Malls to sell merchandise to a ready and growing public; corporate headquarters to capitalize on a labor force unwilling to travel long distances for jobs (with lower real estate costs to boot for businesses). Between 1981 and 1986, Bergen County absorbed 13 million square feet of new office space, more than the 14 buildings of the original Rockefeller Center, completed a half-century earlier.

More than 40 states to sign foreclosure settlement

More than 40 states will sign a settlement with the top-five mortgage servicers over alleged foreclosure abuses that arose more than one year ago, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement Monday night.

Last week, Miller extended the deadline to Monday for states wanting to sign the deal with Bank of America ($7.97 0.13%), Wells Fargo ($30.20 -0.43%), Citigroup ($33.30 -0.24%), JPMorgan Chase ($38.14 -0.14%) and Ally Financial ($22.95 0.03%).

“The sign-on deadline for the proposed joint state-federal mortgage servicing settlement passed Monday with more than 40 states signing on,” Miller said “This enables us to move forward into the very final stages of remaining work.Federal and state officials, as well as representatives from the banks, continue to address matters that they must complete before finalizing any settlement.”

Throughout the day, those representing states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis signaled they are still working on the details of the settlement.

“We’re closer,” a spokesperson for California AG Kamala Harris said.

“My office is continuing to review the intricate draft settlement terms and advocating for improvements to address Nevada’s needs,” said Nevada AG Catherine Cortez Masto in a statement. “Receipt of important state specific information is necessary to make our determination and my office is still in discussions regarding that information.”

Florida AG Pam Bondi said she “remains involved in the settlement discussions in order to reach the best resolution for Floridians and all Americans.” She signed a joint letter with other republican AGs in 2010, saying a settlement that would involve principal reduction creates a moral hazard and lead to more strategic defaults.
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An official in one AG office said an announcement is expected at the end of this week at the earliest.

From Bloomberg:

California, N.Y. Are Among Fewer Than 10 Mortgage Deal Holdouts

California and New York’s attorneys general haven’t signed on to a proposed settlement with five banks over foreclosure practices that has won the support of more than 40 states.

California’s Kamala Harris and New York’s Eric Schneiderman, who have been some of the most outspoken in pushing for changes to the deal, are among those who hadn’t joined the agreement as of yesterday’s deadline for states to decide. More than 40 states signed on to the accord, according to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is helping to lead talks with the banks.

“Adding more numbers probably improves the political dimension of the settlement from the standpoint of the attorneys general,” said Ken Scott, a Stanford University law professor. “If you can say there were only a handful of diehards that didn’t sign on, that gives you some political protection.”
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Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. made a last-minute demand that New York drop claims filed against them Feb. 3 as a condition of the settlement, a person familiar with the matter said.

The push by the three banks raised a new obstacle in getting Schneiderman’s support for the deal, said the person. New York, along with California, Nevada and Delaware said late yesterday they hadn’t signed on to the settlement.

New York sued Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo in state court in Brooklyn, saying their use of a mortgage database known as MERS led to improper foreclosures. Schneiderman said the banks’ use of the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems database misled homeowners, undermined foreclosure proceedings and created uncertainty about ownership interests in properties.

Location still holds key to value

The decline in housing values has not fallen equally on all towns.

A Record analysis of home prices in the first half of 2011 (the latest available in public records) found that, overall, prices were down about 3 percent in Bergen and Passaic counties from the period a year earlier. (Prices are down 17 percent in Bergen and 21.6 percent in Passaic since 2007, when housing prices peaked.)

But in early 2011 at least, wealthier towns generally fared better than lower-income areas affected by the foreclosure crisis.

In addition, less-affluent towns were more affected by tighter mortgage standards and unemployment above 9 percent.

Geography played a role, too.

Towns in eastern Bergen County, close to the George Washington Bridge, also seemed to hold their value better from 2010 to 2011.

From the Press of Atlantic City:

South Jersey towns see more than 16 percent increase in vacant homes

U.S. Census reports show that while the number of total housing units increased nationally by almost 14 percent from 2000 to 2010, the number of vacant housing units ballooned by almost 44 percent.

Michael Busler, a fellow at the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Richard Stockton College, says the gloomy trend may not have reached its end point. “It’s going to get a little bit worse before it gets better,” he said.

New Jersey’s numbers are just as striking — an increase in housing of more than 7 percent while the number of vacant units increased by more than 38 percent. One Essex County town, Belleville, for example, saw the number of vacant housing units jump 134 percent as the number of overall units went up just 1 percent.

Locally, 14 of 23 Atlantic County municipalities have seen the number of vacant housing units increase by 16 percent or more from 2000 to 2010. In addition, 11 of 16 towns in Cape May County and 10 of 14 towns in Cumberland County have seen a similar jump.

“People are becoming frustrated by the system, and a lot of them are walking away from properties,” said James Schroeder, an attorney and real estate agent with Keller Williams in Northfield. He cited statistics from the New Jersey Law Review stating that there were 1.5 million homes nationwide in foreclosure and ready for sale, another 3.5 million to 4 million within three to six months of being sold.

In the end, he said, his company believes that it will be another five to seven years before the traditional housing market picks up again.
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Cape May County saw an overall increase in vacant units for sale, not seasonal, of 75 percent compared with just an 8 percent increase in total units.

Upper Township saw an increase of 232 percent (83 vacant units for sale in 2010 compared with 25 in 2000), while Cape May saw a 245 percent increase (38 compared to 11), Wildwood Crest a 442 percent increase (130 compared to 24) and Cape May Point a whopping 650 percent increase (15 compared to 2).

Nine Atlantic County towns have seen increases in vacant units for sale of 75 percent or more, including increases of 100 percent in Longport and Estell Manor, 111 percent in Buena Vista Township, 126 percent in Linwood and 204 percent in Somers Point — which saw the number of homes vacant and for sale almost triple, going from 24 in 2000 to 73 in 2010.

Nine other towns in the county have a double-digit increase in the percentage of vacant units for sale, leading to a 32 percent increase overall — in a county that saw just an 11 percent increase in total units.

In Ocean County, the number of homes vacant and for sale in Barnegat Township more than doubled (76 to 172). In Stafford Township, that figure jumped from 151 to 272.

Home prices down in most major US cities

Home prices in the New York metropolitan area, including North Jersey, dropped 2 percent in the 12 months ended in October, the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index reported Tuesday.

Nationally, home prices dropped 3.4 percent.

Home prices in the region are back to the levels of spring 2004, and are about 22 percent off their mid-2006 peaks, while national prices have returned to the levels of mid-2003, and are 32 percent off their 2006 peaks.

Home sales and prices have been under pressure from a slow economy and high unemployment. Potential buyers are also concerned that prices may be pulled down further by distressed sales, which are expected to hit the market once the foreclosure pipeline gets moving again after last year’s “robo-signing” reports.

Single-family homes in Bergen County sold for a median $380,000 during the month, down 14.4 percent from a year earlier, while the number of sales dropped 3.3 percent. Home prices declined 18.6 percent in Passaic County, to a median $245,297, as the number of sales plunged almost 20 percent.

Demand for ‘Estate’-Like Condos

REAL ESTATE optimists have been picking up blips on the radar in Bergen County lately, most recently this one: 24 of 68 “attached manor” condominiums with prices starting at $1.25 million sold in a single weekend — before they went up, and before a sales office had time to open.

The preview sales event for the gated development Saddle River Grand, for which ground was broken in Saddle River in September, was held last month at a gated complex in Montvale built by the same developer, Woodmont Properties.

The Enclave at Montvale is smaller — 34 “villa estates” — but 18 months after opening, it has only three units left, said Woodmont’s president, Lewis Zlotnick.
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Gabe Pasquale, a longtime marketing consultant in Bergen County as well as in Rockland County, N. Y., said there was pent-up demand for opulence — particularly among “very affluent empty nesters.”

“These are retired or semiretired captains of industry, older couples that are very ingratiated in their communities, with strong ties to Manhattan,” Mr. Pasquale said. “They do not want to leave the towns in which they already live in Bergen County, or the conveniences or the luxuries. But they do want more of a seamless lifestyle — no maintenance, no hiring groundskeepers and pool maintenance companies.”

The developments are not age-restricted, but they were specifically designed to appeal to an “affluent baby boomer niche,” Mr. Zlotnick said.

Certainly, this notion is not new in Bergen County, or the rest of northern New Jersey.

The Bellaire, a 34-unit gated town-house community, overlooking the Alpine Country Club Golf Course, went on the market five years ago with prices starting at $1.6 million and rising to $3 million. But the finished product — in all its 24-foot domed-ceiling, mahogany-paneled glory — arrived at the same time as crises began detonating on Wall Street.

Units sold very slowly, and only a handful of contracts were signed in 2009, the year of the national real estate crash. Now, two units are listed as resales, one at $1.95 million and the other at $3.398 million, according to the broker, Michele Kolsky-Assatly of Coldwell Banker.

High-end sales have been on the upswing in Bergen County in 2011.

Seven percent of total sales in Bergen involved houses sold for $1 million to $1.25 million, according to Jeffrey Otteau, the president of the Otteau Valuation Group of New Brunswick, which analyzes sales data for the industry. That is the highest percentage of sales in that category of any county, Mr. Otteau said; Morris and Hudson counties each had only 3.3 percent of total sales in that niche.

In the few towns where sales price averages about $1 million — Saddle River, for instance — values have increased by 2.5 percent this year while prices continued to decline statewide, the analyst said.

Affluent towns also have few foreclosures in process, and prices won’t be affected when the state’s big backlog of foreclosed properties eventually hits the market, Mr. Otteau noted.

Still, he suggested, a niche is just a niche: “The phenomenon of ultraluxury, 4,000-to-5,000-square-foot ‘downsizers’ selling well is particular to only a very few communities in northern New Jersey.”

Mr. Pasquale, who worked with several large development firms before starting his own consulting business, said he thought the wealthiest buyers were leading the pack on the way to overall market recovery.

“Many of these buyers are savvy entrepreneurs with strong connections to the financial markets,” he said. “I think they are leaders in buyer sentiment.”

On Vacation at Home, All Year Long

WITH ample opportunities to ski, golf, swim, hike and bike, life in this rural township in the New Jersey Highlands can feel like a year-round resort, residents say.

“I call it ‘being on vacation’ living here,” said Allison Callow, a real estate agent who has lived in Vernon Township for 16 years. She and her family traded in a three-bedroom colonial on one-tenth of an acre in Bergen County for a four-bedroom bilevel on more than an acre abutting a state park, which they bought for $158,000.

Activities in Vernon center on nine lake communities and the Mountain Creek ski resort, the state’s largest. Ownership of Mountain Creek has recently changed hands, and the new proprietors are spending an estimated $20 million on projects that include a 50,000-square-foot day lodge at the base of the 167-acre ski facility off Route 94.

“I see the investment being made by the resort industry as palatable proof that we’re moving ahead,” said Vic Marotta, the town’s first elected mayor, who took office on July 1. “We have a golden opportunity here. How we nurture it and see it through will determine what Vernon looks like in the future.” Mr. Marotta had also served as mayor when it was an appointed position.

Another change that may shape Vernon’s future are new sewer lines, which will largely serve Vernon’s commercial and recreational centers and could attract new businesses and retailers.

The real estate slump has had the effect of bringing in a new wave of second-home buyers and investors to the 1,500 condominiums at Mountain Creek. “We discounted very heavily, and we sold them,” said Andrew Mulvihill, the president of real estate investment at Mountain Creek, noting that his group sold 80 units this past winter.

Among the beneficiaries were Milo Chan and Winnie Donahue, who closed last month on a furnished three-bedroom town house in the Black Creek Sanctuary area, paying $170,000 for a unit that sold for $524,950 in 2004, according to Carol Williams, an agent at Prudential Gross & Jansen Highlands Realty. The couple and their two children, who live in Manhattan, plan to use the town house for weekend getaways in the summer and during ski season. While they weren’t actively looking to buy a second home, Ms. Donahue said the price, and the fact that it was furnished, made the deal irresistible.

“We wanted something turnkey, but this was ridiculous,” said Ms. Donahue, an advertising consultant. “It was a great buy at a great time that just fell into our laps.”
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Mark and Julie Bush were able to take advantage of those dropping prices by waiting it out to buy their new-construction four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house on 3.2 acres. Mark Bush, 30, grew up in Vernon, but was most recently living in a condo here with his wife and two children. For a year and a half, he said he had been keeping his eye on a new house with great views of the mountains.

“Contracts had fallen through and I saw the price keep dropping every couple of months,” said Mr. Bush, a certified public accountant. In January, the Bushes moved into their new house, paying $355,000 for a house originally listed at $499,900.

The first graph plots the unadjusted sales data (closed sales) for the counties listed. Please note the lower bound of the graph, it is set to 500, not to zero. I do this to emphasize the seasonal nature of the Northern NJ market.

(click to enlarge)

The second graph is another view at the sales data for the full year. Please note that this graph does cross at zero.

(click to enlarge)

The third graph displays only May sales, 2000 to 2009 YOY.

(click to enlarge)

The fourth graph displays an overlay of Sales and Inventory from 2003 to 2009.

(click to enlarge)

The fifth graph displays the year over year change in inventory on a month by month basis.

(click to enlarge)

The sixth graph displays the year over year change in sales on a month by month basis.

(click to enlarge)

The last graph displays the absorption rate (not seasonally adjusted), in months:

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Bonus Graphs!

March Sales By County (log scale):

(click to enlarge)

On to the comp killer (which must be a mistake, because Brigadoon prices never fall).

20 Woodbrook Circle, Westfield NJ
Purchased: January 1st, 2007
Purchase Price: $1,450,000

Bedrooms: 5
Baths: 4
Square Feet: 3900
Lot Size: 110×120
Taxes: $23,168

Listed for sale on January 11th, 2009
List Price: $1,325,000 (Ouch!)

Reduced to $1,275,090 on January 23rd.
Reduced to $1,199,000 on February 9th.
Reduced to $1,125,000 on February 27th.
Reduced to $1,075,000 on April 2nd.

The reduction to $1.075m was the magic number, 20 Woodbrook went into attorney review on 4/17 and went under contract on 4/30.

The big question is, what will it sell for? We won’t know until closing.

If it sells at asking price, the seller would have lost $375,000. Closer to $425,000 when you include the transaction costs associated with the sale. At asking, this property is selling at a discount of approximately 25% off it’s 2007 sale price.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it sold at asking. Westfield properties have been selling at about 95% of their last list price (on average) this year. If this property follows that trend, the closing price might be somewhere near $1.02m, and a much steeper loss for the owner.

Anyhow, the report says that Mendham prices have increased 9.8% year over year (I’m assuming mid-April). Transaction activity in that zip is so small, I’m not sure if the sample size makes for any kind of meaningful statistic. In all of March, Mendham Boro and Twp saw 5 closed sales, year to date we are looking at 24.

Anyhow, I pulled the stats from the MLS to see what all the hoopla was all about. I didn’t find it.

Mendham Boro Closed Sales Average Sales Price
March 2008 – $655,000 (4 sales)
March 2009 – $500,833 (3 sales)
Prices down, but with that small sample size the number is meaningless.

YTD 2008 – $686,111 (9 sales)
YTD 2009 – $1,000,625 (8 sales)

Whoa! That must be it. Look at that increase in sales price! Let’s take a look at Mendham Twp.

Mendham Twp Closed Sales Average Sales Price
March 2008 – $2,910,000 (3 sales)
March 2009 – $399,500 (2 sales)
Prices down, but with that small sample size the number is meaningless.

YTD 2008 – $1,186,714 (21 sales)
YTD 2009 – $902,750 (16 sales)
Prices down, sample size is a little better here. I might be a bit more confident about this number

Ok, so what is up with that big jump in prices in Mendham Boro? Well, turns out that in February a $3.7 million home sold (one of two sold that month), and that is really pulling up that average.

Even if we look at the March contract data, to get the most recent indicator of the market, things don’t really look like prices are on the way up either.

Mendham Boro Contract Sales Average Last List Price
March 2008 – $1,077,667 (3 contracts)
March 2009 – $351,333 (2 contracts)
Keep in mind we’re talking about list prices here, we don’t know sale prices until the home closes. Same comment, sample size is tiny, the price change is noise.

Mendham Twp Contract Sales Average Last List Price
March 2008 – $2,614,667 (3 contracts)
March 2009 – $1,247,475 (2 contracts)
Same comment applies here.

I’m not sure what kind of magic data Altos has, or even how they could possibly get “real time” real estate data, but I’m not buying it. Even if they are basing their information on the current month contracts, which would be a very risky move, the sample sizes are so small in these towns that these median/average price changes are just statistical noise, up or down. This is one of the reasons you rarely see me talking about prices or sales volume changes on a town by town basis. Before you poo-poo me for ignoring the green shoots, this same report has Rumson home price *down* 30% in the same period.

From Forbes:

New Jersey Suburb’s Prices Holding Up

Mendham, N.J., is a small township of 5,000 residents 40 miles from New York City. With tree-lined streets and large, traditional houses on quiet, wooded acres owned by affluent residents–the median income is $145,000–it’s every bit the picture of an idyllic small-town suburb.

It’s got good schools and just-close-enough proximity to a big city to make it desirable, just like dozens of similar communities that fill the Tri-State, northern Chicago or Bay Area suburbs.

However, as the nation’s real estate market declines, Mendham has been one of the best performers in the Forbes Luxury Housing Index, which ranks the 500 most expensive ZIP codes in the country, using real estate statistics provided by Altos Research, a Mountain View, Calif.-based real estate derivates research firm. What’s stirring in Mendham? Why are prices up 9.8% from this time last year?

The whole of 2008 was a very slow year. While early 2009 has been an improvement so far, it’s still well behind sales rates of 2006 and 2007.

Brokers say that the depressed market has area homeowners pulling their homes entirely rather than trying to find sellers. Last year at this time there were 76 homes listed for sale while this year there are 105.

That’s a higher inventory, but in a wealthy marketplace where the median income is $145,000 and distressed homes are virtually nonexistent (Mendham has only three foreclosures, according to RealtyTrac), it’s also a sign of sellers’ increased confidence in finding a buyer.

“In 30 years, I’ve never had as bad a year real estate wise as I did last year,” says Betty Kiser, a broker at Coldwell Banker. “2007 was a really good year, but in 2008 it fell apart.”

Sadly, it’s not yet time to ring the recovery bell. Prices are still off from 2006 and 2007, by between 15% and 20% according to local brokerages, and still sliding a bit. According to our index, the median price has fallen to $1.26 million from $1.275 million in the last week. This calculation is a rolling average of the previous 90 days.

Boomer Bows Out in Shakeout That Led to Vermont Beard

In early 2008, David Roberts’s morning routine at the Ridgewood, New Jersey, train station was as unchanged as the view from its platform, which overlooks a downtown anchored by the Daily Treat diner and a 77-year-old movie theater. Roberts would sip coffee, eat a corn muffin, scan the Financial Times and step aboard the 7:50 train.

This was not the same trip he had made for the 14 years he worked for three Wall Street firms. This was a commute to nowhere.

Roberts, 61, was bound for an outplacement center on New York’s East 37th Street, where he pursued job leads and the dream of starting a consulting firm with former colleagues. Like many of his neighbors in Ridgewood, Roberts had been thrown out of work after the credit markets seized up last year, joining thousands of commuters in the competition for jobs that don’t exist anymore.

Roberts, an economist at Dominion Bond Rating Service until January 2008, was fired 13 months after he predicted in a published report the recession that would end his livelihood.

“You can see a train wreck coming,” Roberts says. “But that doesn’t mean you can get out of the way.”

Roberts has suffered through a chain of unanswered job applications, an ill-fated relocation to Washington, and depression. As of April, he had lost or spent more than half of his $1.4 million in savings. One of the few risks he takes with money these days is at the poker table.
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Roberts and his wife — who is battling multiple sclerosis — are moving to Vermont, where they honeymooned and often vacation. He has grown a gray-and-white beard more befitting the Green Mountains than Wall Street.

Knowing that the money he has left won’t last forever, Roberts must figure out a new way to earn a living. “I don’t know where the income is going to come from,” he says.

Roberts is one of 26,000 people who lost financial services jobs in New York City from January 2008 to March 2009, according to Moody’s Economy.com. Many live in bedroom communities such as Ridgewood — a Bergen County enclave of 24,300 people 25 miles from Wall Street.

Ridgewood retailers say some stores’ Christmas receipts were off 40 percent last year. As many as 30 stores and restaurants in the business district are for sale. The village government trimmed three building inspectors after a two-year, 46 percent drop in construction activity.
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Nestled in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains, Ridgewood has had a symbiotic relationship with New York’s financial district since the mid-1800s, when tycoons built summer homes there. Commuter trains soon carried dad to the financial jungle while mom stayed home and raised the kids. “It’s for domesticated masters of the universe, a throwback to the 1950s,” says Erik Sorenson, chief executive officer of online career firm Vault.com and a Ridgewood resident.

Ridgewood’s projected median household income for 2009 is $129,394, according to market research firm Nielsen Claritas, which makes it the 17th-most-affluent U.S. community in the 20,000 to 50,000 population range. From 1991 to 2006, the average home sale price more than tripled to $864,000, according to the New Jersey Multiple Listing Service.

Now that market has reversed. Ridgewood averaged 11.3 home sales a month in the first quarter of 2009, versus 32 in the first quarter of 2007, a 65 percent drop, according to Otteau Valuation Group Inc., a real estate analysis and consulting firm in East Brunswick, NJ.

Roberts says he and his neighbors who worked on Wall Street “do not understand: You lose your bonus, you lose your job, and you have no prospects.”
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“We have no income coming in,” he says. “I’m just trying to get by. I don’t know what the end scenario is going to be.”

The Robertses have found getting out of Ridgewood is easier said than done. They put their house on the market for $899,000 in October and had to lower the price three times before getting a contract — for $760,000. That fell through in March. As of mid-April, they had a new contract for $775,000.
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They’ve lined up a rental house in South Newfane, Vermont, for $1,800 a month, roughly half their current mortgage payment. Next, Roberts must figure out how to stop the money drain, which has reduced his nest egg by half to $720,000. More than 70 percent of the money disappeared in the market crash, he says, lamenting that he didn’t act on his own prediction that a recession was coming.

“As an economist, I have no excuse whatsoever,” he says.

Dissecting the ‘Heart of Orange’

A GLOBAL economic crisis provides the perfect opportunity to rethink the design of an old city — be it Paris or Orange — said a French urbanist who has been engaged in doing that recently, both there and here.

“Cities have this time to consider intelligently what they are going to be in the future,” said the urbanist, Michel Cantal-Dupart, through an interpreter, as he conducted a walking tour on a rainy day in early April along the streets of Orange’s mostly dreary downtown section. “Then, when things improve,” he said, “the cities will know what to do.”

Mr. Cantal-Dupart recently served on a team of architects and planners commissioned by the French government to re-envision the master plan for Paris, which at the age of 2,000 faces special challenges in becoming a “sustainable” city of the future. The team’s proposals were unveiled in March.

This month, he was asked to help to do something similar for 200-year-old Orange, at the behest of a nonprofit development corporation called Hands Inc. Harnessing federal, state and private grant money to rebuild troubled neighborhoods in Essex County, the group has been based here since the early 1980s.

Until now, it has relied mostly on a strategy of “finding the worst houses on the block, and turning them around one by one,” said Patrick Morrissy, the group’s executive director.

In fact, several days before the activity in Orange, Hands expanded on its primary strategy with the announcement of a nonprofit alliance to buy 47 abandoned and neglected houses in Essex County — all foreclosure properties owned by the former Washington Mutual Bank.

The houses are in Orange, West Orange, Newark and Irvington, all communities hit especially hard by foreclosures.

“We have to keep up this critical work,” Mr. Morrissy said, “because the current crisis is threatening the impact of all we have done in the last 25 years.”

10/18 – 19,035
10/25 – 18,940 (0.5% Decrease)

NJMLS – http://www.njmls.com
(New Jersey Multiple Listing Service)
Single Family Homes, Condo, Coop
(Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Passaic Counties)

10/18 – 9,183
10/25 – 9,121 (0.7% Decrease)

MLSGuide – http://www.mlsguide.com
Single Family Homes, Condo, Coop
(Hudson County)

10/18 – 2,804
10/25 – 2,832 (1.0% Increase)

Local journalist tracks future of N.J. farming
By Jessica Beym

As housing developments sprout on farms and silos turn into smokestacks, Jerseyans are left to wonder:

Can New Jersey still proudly bear the title of the Garden State?

Charles Harrison, a journalist from Woodstown, set out to answer that question in his book, “Tending the Garden State: Preserving Agriculture in New Jersey.”
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“You get a lot of negative or uninformed comments about New Jersey,” said Harrison, who teaches a magazine article writing course at Rowan University. “We’re the most urban state in the country. Our visitors fly into Newark or drive down the Turnpike, and that’s all they see. So I wanted to find out for myself what’s left of the garden state.”
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But with the cities of New York and Philadelphia as neighbors, the need for housing soared and farms began to disappear after World War II, Harrison said.

For years, New Jersey’s southern counties — particularly Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem — stood their ground and kept farms from disappearing. It wasn’t until state highways 55 and 42 were built that the farmland of Washington Township was exposed to development, Harrison writes.

Since 1957, Washington Township’s 200 farms have shrunk to only two, while the population has skyrocketed from under 4,000 to today’s 50,000.

The problem, Harrison said, is that people need homes, developers need land to build them on, and when checks are waved in front of the farmers’ faces, they are faced with a tough question.

“It’s not that farmers are trying to get out – it’s a good business. But lots of farmers are finding out that their kids aren’t terribly interested in carrying on the family farming business,” Harrison said, adding that Duffield’s is one of the lucky, and the few.

10/11 – 19,084
10/18 – 19,035 (0.3% Decrease)

NJMLS – http://www.njmls.com
(New Jersey Multiple Listing Service)
Single Family Homes, Condo, Coop
(Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Passaic Counties)

10/11 – 9,261
10/18 – 9,183 (0.9% Decrease)

MLSGuide – http://www.mlsguide.com
Single Family Homes, Condo, Coop
(Hudson County)

10/11 – 2,787
10/18 – 2,804 (0.6% Increase)

Hundreds of housing units set for landfill

The Landfill Redevelopment Committee will present its vision for the former borough landfill to borough officials at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Somerset County Court House jurors room.

The committee’s plan calls for about 1,200 housing units, 80 acres of open space, 45,000 square feet of retail space, a 25,000-square-foot inn and conference center, 25,000 square feet of office space, and considerable room for civic uses and a cinema or cultural center.

The plan has been developed during the last year as professional planners and volunteers in the borough met and invited the public to give input. Now, it’s ready to be presented to a joint meeting of the Borough Council and Planning Board.

Colin Driver, the borough’s director of economic development, said the exact details of the plan, presented last week at a Stakeholder Committee meeting, are subject to change.

The 160 acres of the Landfill Redevelopment Site include the old landfill along Route 206, NJ Transit property and other adjacent land.

One of the highlights of the plan is a mixed-use transportation building near the train station, Driver said.
…
Driver said the current plans for housing on the site would bring in about 1,900 new residents to the borough, including 80 children, based on data from similar housing developments. There would be no restriction on families with children, he said.