New Jersey Real Estate Report

From Polymarket:

Polymarket and Parcl Announce Partnership to Launch Real Estate Prediction Markets Powered by Parcl Indices

Parcl, the real-time housing data and onchain real estate platform, and Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, today announced a partnership to bring Parcl’s daily housing price indices to a new suite of real estate prediction markets on Polymarket.

The partnership will introduce housing-focused markets that settle against Parcl’s published price indices, giving traders and analysts an objective, data-driven reference point for forecasting where home prices are headed. Polymarket will list and operate the markets; Parcl will provide independent index data and settlement reference values designed for transparent verification.

Housing is the largest asset class in the world, but it’s still hard to express a clean view on price direction without taking on property-level complexity, leverage, or long timelines. By combining Parcl’s daily indices with Polymarket’s event-market structure, the partnership offers a simpler way to trade housing outcomes, with clear settlement rules and public, auditable resolution data.

“Prediction markets are gaining substantial momentum and represent a paradigm shift in how views are expressed, and truth is identified,” said Trevor Bacon, CEO of Parcl. “Parcl is the source of truth for real-estate pricing, and we believe real estate should be a major category within the prediction-market ecosystem. Polymarket is a pioneer in the space, and we’re excited to partner with them.”

“Prediction markets work best when the data is clear, and the outcome can be verified without debate,” said Matthew Modabber, CMO of Polymarket. “Parcl’s daily housing indices give us a strong foundation to launch housing markets that settle transparently and consistently. Real estate should be a first-class category in prediction markets, and this partnership is how we get there.”
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Initial markets will focus on major U.S. housing markets. Market templates will include questions tied to index movement across defined periods, such as whether a city’s home price index finishes up or down over a month, quarter, or year, as well as threshold-style outcomes that settle against published index values.

To improve transparency for traders, each market will reference a dedicated Parcl resolution page showing the final settlement value, historical index context, and the methodology used to calculate the index. This gives participants a single, consistent source of truth for verifying outcomes.

From the Daily Mail:

Condo crash deepens as cities see prices plunge nearly 20% – the worst slide since the Great Financial Crisis

Florida‘s condo slump is now the worst since the Great Financial Crisis — and the numbers are getting hard to ignore.

Across the state, condo values are down 9.9 percent over the past 12 months of 2025, according to new data shared by housing analyst Nick Gerli — the steepest one-year drop since 2009.

But that figure masks far steeper losses in parts of the state, where values have plunged well into double digits in just the last year.

On the gulf side of the state, Punta Gorda has been hit hardest, with condo prices down 18.6 percent year-over-year. 

Cape Coral is not far behind at 14.2 percent, followed by Tampa and parts of Sarasota which recorded price drops of between 12 and 18 percent year-over-year, Gerli said. 

In South Florida, Broward County is down 11.9 percent, Palm Beach 11.4 percent and Miami-Dade 7.2 percent — meaning the drops have spread beyond smaller Gulf Coast markets where the problem was contained.

The scale of the declines is alarming. Double-digit price drops in a single year are rare outside of full-blown housing crashes.

Gerli said that on average, Florida condo values are down 13 percent from their peak. 

Florida houses roughly a fifth of all US condos, and was long considered a hotspot for retirees, first-time buyers, and foreign investors. Pandemic buyers flocked to the area to work remotely, but that trend went bust this year.

The drop in condo prices comes as inventory has surged, with condos flooding the market and buyers bombarded with options.

Many condo owners are selling due to skyrocketing homeowner association fees and high insurance premiums, if they can even get insurance at all.

The problem grew even worse over the summer, when the Sunshine State’s residents who flocked there for affordable condos found themselves suddenly stuck with old properties worth virtually nothing they are desperate to escape. 

From Marketplace:

Pending home sales are on the rise, which could be good news for the new year

There’s a spark of good news for the housing market as 2025 draws to a close: Pending home sales shot up by more than 3% in November, after rising nearly 2.5% the month before. The National Association of Realtors reports those numbers, which count signed contracts that are expected to close over the next four to six weeks.

Existing home sales have also been trending higher for the past three months, and the growth of home prices has been moderating — just 1.2% year-over-year in November.

So, affordability is improving, there’s a little bit more inventory available for sale, mortgage rates have trended lower over the year. For a change, the housing news is not all gloom and doom.

“A slight surge in pending home sales — it is a promising sign, the best increase on a seasonal basis since 2023,” said Guy Cecala at Inside Mortgage Finance.

Especially because the market since then looked like a “housing market stuck in the mud,” said Cecala.

Homes and mortgages haven’t seemed affordable for most would-be homebuyers for a while, said Edward Pinto at the American Enterprise Institute. He points out, since 2019, “House prices went up something like 30 or 40%, and wage growth was something like 11%. And so, we ended up with housing becoming much less affordable,” he said.

But by the end of this year, “House-price appreciation, adjusting for consumer prices, [was] actually down 0.5% to 1%,” Pinto said.

Plus, he expects more homes to come onto the market, putting the brakes on future home-price increases. 

There’s another central figure in the affordability equation: mortgage rates. The 30-year-fixed rate peaked near 8% two years ago. Since mid-October, it’s been hovering around 6.2%, said Cecala.

“Mortgage rates are moving in the right direction, even if a lot slower than any of us anticipated,” he said.

Cecala is expecting two to three more interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve in 2026, which he thinks will bring mortgage rates down further. 

“I think we need to get under 6% before we see any meaningful increase in home-buying activity,” he said.