New Jersey Real Estate Report

From the Star Ledger (Hat Tip JB):

This 2-family home on the market for $590K got 88 offers in less than a week

It was a quick sell for a home in Bergen County that hit the market for just six days and got 88 offers.

The two-family in Lyndhurst drew more than 200 people to an open house and 184 appointments for showings.

“There was a line of people waiting to get in … before my agent got there,” said Jan R. Kwapniewski, president of Coccia Realty. “In the 38 years I have been selling real estate, I never had such an amount of showings on a single house in six days.”

The two-family house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms. The first unit, which includes the first floor and a finished basement, has two bedrooms and three bathrooms. The second unit occupies the second and third floors and has two bedrooms and one bathroom.

It was listed for $590,000 on May 22 and the final showings were on May 28.

“Although we had offers in the first few days, we advised the seller it was in their best interest to keep the property on the market for a full week,” Kwapniewski said. “This was a good strategy as the ‘phenomenal offers’ received two days into the listing were low in comparison to the offers received after a full week of showings.”

All of the offers were over list price, and some were as high as 20% over list price. The contract price can’t be disclosed until after closing.

“The seller did not accept the highest dollar offer but selected an offer where the buyer made certain concessions – namely a waiver of lender appraisal and a waiver of the home inspection contingency clause as well as a 30 day closing,” Kwapniewski said.
…
A two family home in Clifton recently generated 120 offers and sold for $150,000 over its $449,000 asking price.

Hat Tip ChiFi! (No, not this post, but the last two).

From CNN:

US home prices fall by most in 11 years but sales are down

US home sales fell in April for the second month in a row and home prices had the biggest drop since 2012, according to a National Association of Realtors report released Thursday.

Sales had shown some life, rising in February after a full year of declines due to surging mortgage rates, but that momentum has since cooled.

In April, sales of existing homes — which include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — dropped 3.4% from March. Annually, sales were down 23% from a year ago and the seasonally adjusted annualized sales pace dropped from 5.57 million units a year ago to 4.28 million in April.

April’s falling sales showed that February’s reversal — which ended the longest streak of month-to-month declining home sales on record, going back to 1999 for all homes — did not take off. Mortgage rates were rising in February and pushing toward 7% in March when many of these April closings went into contract.

“Home sales are bouncing back and forth but remain above recent cyclical lows,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “The combination of job gains, limited inventory and fluctuating mortgage rates over the last several months have created an environment of push-pull housing demand.”

This sales pace is higher than the end of last year, when sales hit a low for this cycle of 4 million units. But the current sales pace is down 33% from the cyclical peak of a 6.34 million unit pace in January 2022.

While all four major regions of the US registered both monthly and annual drops in sales, drops continue to be bigger in areas that are highest cost and saw the biggest run up in prices over the past few years. 

Sales in the Northeast and the Midwest were both down 1.9% from March, while sales in the South decreased 3.4% and sales in the West were down 6.1% from the previous month. On an annual basis, sales in the West are down a whopping 31%.