New Jersey Real Estate James Boyer Morris, Essex & Union County NJ Realtor

I have been doing yet another of my real estate reports for local Northern New Jersey towns. I normally look at towns along the Midtown Direct Train line of New Jersey transit, otherwise known as the Morristown line.

This time I was taking a look at the Millburn NJ Luxury Real Estate market. I posted lots of great statistics about the last 2 years as a comparison over at the NJ Real Estate Blog.

What I was able to come up with is that there are a number of home owners who are holding out for higher prices in Millburn New Jersey. That is not surprising but the numbers seem higher in Millburn than in other local towns. In my mind this sets Millburn up for a possible round of capitulation, meaning that if the spring market of 2009 is not better than the spring and summer market of 2008, or should I say, if the financial crisis which we went though in September and is still going on causes lots of these people in Millburn to loose jobs ... then we likely would see a number of these hold outs give up as neighbors discount their homes in order to get them to sell.

You see, if you want 2 million for your home, and the average price in your neighborhood for a similar house to yours is 1.8 million it is highly unlikely you will convince a buyer to pay 2 million for yours. Even if you could, and appraiser is going to come along and tell the mortgage bank well it is only worth 1.8 million and that will be all the Mortage company will be willing to lend on. So your choice will be to reduce to the 1.8 million or loose your buyer.

So your holding out for 2 million in Millburn NJ and the average price has been 1.8 million, but now the spring market comes along and some of your neighbors decide they have to get their homes sold, so they reduce their prices, that hypothetically pushes the price down to 1.7 million with the appearance that prices could go lower. What do you do, wait for higher prices which might be 5 years away, or cut your losses?

Well, I thought it was a buyers market. That's what everyone keeps screaming. Well to tell you the truth I have been having a fairly good year this year. That was up until we hit the financial crisis then the $hit hit the fan, deals fell apart, buyers backed away yada yada yada.

I have to say though that there are some really great deals out there. A few weeks ago I found one of them in fact. It was a home over on Western Ave here in Morristown New Jersey. This home was a Morristown Foreclosure and the deal looked good.

I put my offer together and the responce was we already have offers. Come back with your highest and best. Highest and best, well I have not heard that since I had to tell REALTORS that on a house I sold in May over in West Orange. Since we have been in the credit crunch I did not think I would be hearing that statment, but there it was. I raised my offer to 15K over asking price and still did not get the house. Go figure.

I have more about this over at my Morristown NJ Real Estate blog.

James Boyer
Morristown NJ REALTOR
RE/MAX Properties Unlimited
973-539-6300 Office
973-647-0253 Direct

These are dark days for the Real Estate markets around the country, and for mortgage companies, and for the economy in general. Every place I turn, people are talking about it, every news channel I put the TV on, they are talking about it.

I have to say, I love it, I just love it!!

Am I some person who thrives on the misery of others you might be asking yourselves?

No not really, I believe that things always look the worst, like everything could just come to an end right before they start getting better. In watching the news again today while they talked about Wamo needing to be bought out or it will fail, I thought to myself, I should check my bank accounts and see if I can send my 2008 IRA contribution in early, put it all to work, possibly buy shares in the S&P 500, or if I want to take a little more risk, buy Wells Fargo, or Bank of America, or General Motors, or Ford, what the heck all of these companies have weathered ultimate storm after ultimate storm (I think I should have said perfect storm but you know what I mean).

I wrote a blog post about my experence in the Morristown nj real estate market and what all was going on during black Monday September 15th 2008, the day Lehman fell, Merrill had no choice but to sell out at fire sale prices, and near the end of the day the AIG dragon started to rear it's ugly head, and Wamo waited on the sidelines to implode. After all, who could be thinking of buying Morristown nj real estate on a day when it looked like the world was coming to an end financially.

If you visit my blog post about Black Monday, please leave a relevant comment. The blog will even let you have a relevant link back to your website that Google & Yahoo will give you credit for, unlike commenting on active rain blog posts which give you no credit with the search engines.

Thank you,

Jim

James Boyer
Morristown NJ REALTOR
RE/MAX Properties Unlimited
973-539-6300 Office
973-647-0253 Direct

Interest Rate Drop, signals time to buy Summit NJ Real Estate

With the real estate markets in most of New Jersey stabilized and some real estate markets already moving higher, the new lower interest rates brought about by the feds takeover of freddy and fanny are a good signal to buy while the buying is good.

Some of the real estate markets such as the Summit NJ Real Estate market really did not turn down much. For example for the entire year of 2007 the average selling price of a home in Summit New Jersey was actually 2% higher than in 2006. Now Summit is poised to move up faster than the average town in New Jersey, why? the locals know.

Interested in finding out more about the Summit NJ real estate market as well as all the surrounding markets visit jboyerhomes.com where you can find all kinds of great local information for many of the great towns of Northern New Jersey.

James Boyer
Summit NJ REALTOR
RE/MAX Properties Unlimited
973-647-0253 Direct
973-539-6300 Office

There is a very costly mistake that Morristown New Jersey home sellers are continually making. I have blogged about this before, the statistics support what I have been saying all along. Yet over and over again I see this same mistake repeated. It gets to the point where I just shake my head in wonderment what some of these Morristown NJ Home sellers are smoking.

Just when I think the news media has publicised the downturn in the real estate market way more then enough, yet another home comes on the market listed 10% or more too high. Over and over again I am proved right, all it takes is a little time and the price reduction comes.

Another interesting fact seems to play out every month when I do the monthly Morristown NJ Real Estate market update. Every month 40% to 60% of the homes that have sold, actually sold in less then 30 days. How many price reductions if any have these homes gone through? Very rarely have these homes gone though any price reductions actually. They were priced right to start with, and they sold fast and usually fairly close to their asking price.

Pricing your home to high to start with is very costly, it costs you time, and effort to keep your home in showing condition, and on top of that the statistics have long shown that the highest price any home seller is going to get for their home is in the first 2 to 4 weeks it is on the market. It is all down hill for there.

James Boyer
Morristown NJ REALTOR
RE/MAX Properties Unlimited
973-539-6300 Office
973-647-0253 Direct