New Jersey Real Estate Report

From the Record:

N.J. home sales activity at highest level since 2005

The number of home sales in New Jersey is up 17 percent from last year and is on track to hit the highest level since the housing-boom days of 2005, an East Brunswick real estate expert said Wednesday.

But home prices haven’t been pulled upward as fast, rising about 3 percent this year, according to Jeffrey Otteau, an appraiser and consultant whose forecasts are followed by many in the real estate industry. Prices remain about 16 percent below their peaks in mid-2006, leaving many homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their properties are worth.

“Housing prices aren’t higher because incomes aren’t higher,” Otteau told about 100 real estate agents at a seminar in Hasbrouck Heights.

Otteau predicted that home prices will increase about 4 percent next year, as sales activity remains strong. Low mortgage rates, an improving employment market and pent-up demand are increasing the buyer pool, he said.

“Young people who have been stuck in rental housing for a while are beginning to make the move into home-buying,” Otteau said.

Because of New York City’s strong job recovery, demand for housing is strongest in areas closest to the city, especially in towns with commuter train lines. Bergen and Passaic counties, for example, both have less than a six-month supply of housing inventory for sale, a level that generally points to rising prices as buyers compete for properties. Several of the most in-demand towns in the state are in Bergen County, including Lyndhurst, Glen Rock, Waldwick and Ridgewood, Otteau said.

From the Daily Record:

N.J. taxes report: Businesses say fix N.J. now

Ralph Zucker walked into the Bell Labs building one day in 2007, looked around and saw the once-bustling site contained only a vast, eerie silence.

The shell was intact. Four separate pavilions connected by a ring of walkways were under one glass-paneled roof that allowed sunlight to stream in. But now it looked like a giant’s greenhouse, where nothing grew.

Google wasn’t coming here. Apple wasn’t coming here. So Zucker, the president of Somerset Development, decided he would need to turn the iconic — and seriously outdated — corporate office into a campus not only with technology companies, but also with retailers, houses, a health center and hotel.

“If we create great places ourselves, then people will not have to get up in the morning and travel an hour, an hour and a half,” Zucker said. “People (here) get up every morning and travel into Manhattan and sit in line or take the ferry or take the bus or the train, and that’s an arduous commute. But they go there because those are great places.”

New Jersey could use more great places, but building them is a chore. The state suffers from heavy tax burdens that leave it among the toughest for businesses to operate, many surveys show. And yet, with a transportation fund that is nearly broke, it needs more tax revenue to fix broken down roads and bridges.

It has prompted both the state and towns like Holmdel to dig deep into their playbook to provide tax relief, doling out billions of dollars in potential tax breaks to employers promising jobs in return.

Their strategy has barely kept New Jersey’s economy afloat. The state’s economic growth of 0.4 percent in 2014 ranked 46th lowest in the nation.

It wasn’t always this way. New Jersey was once a low-cost alternative to Manhattan, the prototype for America’s suburbanization after World War II. Giant companies and their workers moved here in tandem. And the state — with its cheap land, skilled workers and transportation system — was to be envied. As recently as 2000, the state’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent.

Now, its biggest assets are unraveling.

The long march from a global capital for innovation to bottom of the pack has prompted business leaders to say enough is enough. They’re crying out for lawmakers to come up with a long-term strategy that paves the way for a new generation of workers. It’s a generation that doesn’t want to sit in traffic or on a train for hours. They don’t have to; with technology, they can live anywhere.

“There’s just too many issues that we’re facing as a state and too many issues we’re facing in the future, that if we don’t start taking action and making some improvements, we’re going to dig our hole deeper,” said Tom Bracken, president of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. “I don’t know where it ends, but it doesn’t end in a good place.”