From the Bucks County Courier Times:
Will regular guy bail as Wildwood upscales?
They want to upscale Wildwood, which is like a fast-food joint putting out linen and hiring a wine steward.
For nearly a century Wildwood has been the place on the Jersey shore where a working guy could take his family on a week’s summer vacation and not go bust. Now the place has gone condo crazy.
Many of the small, affordable (and dated) motels that lined the seaside are gone. About 30 have been knocked down in three years.
Rising throughout North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest (two of the five municipalities that make up “The Wildwoods”) are beige, vinyl-clad condo rentals that sleep eight, 10 or more for $2,000 a week — and that’s a deal.
A recently demolished site in North Wildwood has a sign that even more condos are “Coming Soon.” These will have “Hardwood floors” and “Granite counter tops” — the dcor opiates of the upper middle class masses.
…
Wildwood Mayor Ernest Troi-ano Jr. said growth has been as-tonishing. As real estate prices in nearby Stone Harbor and Cape May soared, investors flooded into the Wildwoods, sending prices skyward like a gull on an updraft.“Three or four years ago you could pick up a house in Wildwood for 30 or 40 thousand dollars. Today, that same house is selling for 300 or 400 thousand,” he said.
…
One showed me a project for the “new” boardwalk which he said will have — egad — a Star-bucks, a high-end ice-cream shop and wi-fi cafes for laptop geeks.“We want the guy who makes $100,000 to $150,000 to come here. It’s beachfront property, it’s premium, and the last I checked, God ain’t makin’ any more of it,” one agent told me.
The article fails to mention that inventory and days on market is at an all time high in Wildwood and especially Wildwood Crest. The flippers are gone, and a significant portion of price growth in the Crest over the past 3 years was due to speculation. Condos and townhomes stay on the market for long periods of time with little decrease in prices. The list prices in this area are ridiculous, and sellers and realtors seem to be oblivious to the current state of the market.
No matter what realtors or the mayor believe, this market is ripe for a large price decraese.
I wish “God would stop making” agents like the one quoted in the article.
Yes, because guys making $150k per year want nothing more than to hang out on the boardwalk trying to win a carton of cigarettes on the “wheel of fortune” game while sipping a lime ricky.
The jersey shore is a nice place for a day trip, but due to the exhorbitant cost, the all-inclusive vacation in the carribean is a better deal.
Growing up we went to the jersey shore for vacation, but nowadays mt wife and I feel it has deteriorated so much, its hard to justify spending thousands of dollars to vacation there. It’s depressing.
Wildwood Crest right now is notorious for new MLS #’s to “restart the clock”. A good majority of the properties have been on the market for well over a year now with little price change. Builders can’t finish their townhomes but will not negotiate with the buyers. People are marketing homes as furnished new construction but have renters in them when they are shown. It’s a big mess down there and I predict it will only get worse .
I wonder if we’ll see a big jump in shore inventory after labor day.
grim
I was in Wildwood Crest in June, and I thought “they’ve killed their town”. There were so many fewer people there, because all the townhouses are empty. They’re either for sale or for rent. There are fewer motels for regular people to stay in, and the businesses are only going to stay afloat for so long. It’s a shame.
jw
I have also read that condo owners are not subject to the 14% hotel tax, thereby making it harder for hotels to compete with them. Will the Wildwoods be losing taxes because of this or does the new construction tax rate for all these new condo’s and townhomes more than make up the difference?
KL
Long time homeowner in Wildwood.
Property taxes continue to rise. It doesn’t really make sense. There has to be two or three times the rateables. New construction is everywhere. Bloated governments.
Nothing is selling, but they break ground on new projects every day. Very strange…stay away from this one.
It is extremely sad to see what has happened there. They want high rise hotels like Ocean City, MD. It appears that even in OCMD they are only 20 stories and they want 28 stories in Wildwood. The largest convention group (NJ Firefighters) that has been going to Wildwood for many years has even voted to move the convention out of there.
WILDWOOD is the most disgusting location in Jersey…went there on the recommendation of a co-worker of my wife, simply walked away from $700! No refunds. Went down to Cape May, checked into the Congress, stayed there that summer and went back the next….spent well on meals and toys for our little girl….our household income is $250k….and we’ll never set foot in WILDWOOD again.
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