West Windsor, NJ

Scenic beauty abounds at Elements in Windsor, New Jersey. This prestigious 55+ community of just 156 homes is surrounded by scenic woodlands and farmlands. The community is dotted with sparkling ponds and features relaxing trails perfect for a morning jog or an evening stroll. The homes of this unique active adult community are set on spacious home sites and the community offers 115 acres of open spaces adding to the relaxing country charm.

Built by Centex Homes, the community opened in 2007 and today offers both new construction and resale homes. The location of Elements West Windsor is ideal for residents still in the work force. It’s just minutes from Princeton Junction which features convenient train service to New York City while the New Jersey Turnpike is also easily accessible. Everyday conveniences are also just a short drive from home. Shopping malls, grocery stores, golf courses, movie theaters, health care facilities and more are all just minutes away.

The homes at this intimate sized New Jersey active adult community are available in four unique floor plans all of which offer a nice variety of options to personalize the home. Sizes range from 1,942 to 3,968 square feet and pricing ranges from the mid $300’s to the mid $400’s. Three of the floor plans are single-story ranch style with some offering an optional second story loft space. One of the floor plans is a two-story design. All of the homes feature some beautiful architectural details and high-end touches such as two-sided fireplaces, granite countertops, crown molding, custom arches, unique ceiling features and much more.

Residents of this elegant active adult community enjoy a 10,000 square foot enrichment center complete with high-end amenities typically found at larger active adult communities. There is a state-of-the-art fitness center with aerobics studio, an indoor swimming pool, rooms for table tennis, billiards and cards plus a computer center. Outdoors there is another swimming pool, sports courts for tennis and bocce ball, shuffleboard and walking trails. Other features include a community garden, amphitheater, children’s playground and community ponds with a fishing dock.

To ensure residents enjoy an exciting lifestyle there is a full-time activities director on-staff. The community event calendar is always full with a nice variety of classes, daytrips, holiday parties, hobby club meetings and much more. Residents of this tight-knit community welcome newcomers with smiling faces and everyone appreciate the friendly neighborhood charm.

For more information and photos of this and other NJ active adult retirement communities please visit 55Places.com. To stay in touch with us please join our Facebook page by clicking the Facebook link below.

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As reported by Aol Real Estate, "NeighborhoodScout found America's best family-friendly neighborhood in New Jersey. It is a small town that is completely contained in a single neighborhood: West Windsor. It is in central N.J., not far from Princeton.

"The school district is top-notch, ranking in the top 7% in New Jersey, and the top 3% nationwide. Families with school-aged children are the prevailing family type. It is also rated as safer than 97% of neighborhoods in America."

Scout's Family Friendly Score (100 is best): 98 (Excellent)
Found Within ZIP Code(s): 08550


West Windsor is in Mercer County, NJ. (use these links to search for homes). As reported by the NY Times in July, West Windsor is "The Town That Tries to Keep It Country...

"One of the state's fastest-growing residential areas, West Windsor faces competing demands: how to develop more housing, yet retain some semblance of its history as a bucolic farming community dating to the Revolutionary War.

"On the one hand, there is an open-space program that officials have aggressively applied to preserve about half of the township's land. On the other, there are 1,196 homes going up in the northwestern corner - many on less than a quarter of an acre - in response to a state Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that found West Windsor had neglected its affordable-housing obligation.

"Residents might wait as long as three years for reserved parking at the Princeton Junction train station (named for a neighborhood of West Windsor), which ranks as New Jersey Transit's second-busiest station and Amtrak's eighth-busiest - the only nonurban station in the country to crack that particular Top 10 list. Meanwhile, across town, families can pluck fresh strawberries for $2 a quart at Grover's U-Pick-Em Farm...

"The two most frequently cited reasons for moving to West Windsor are top-ranked schools and easy access to New York, Philadelphia and the Route 1 corridor between Princeton and New Brunswick." To learn more about the West Windsor schools, things to do, the history, and long-range community planning, read the NY Times blog post.

To get information on housing, real estate prices, sales, neighborhoods (there are 2 55+ communities), and amenities, contact me. I live in West Windsor, am a Mercer County native, and am committed to keeping our lifestyle as enviable as it is now, and preserving the family-friendly feeling and small-town values we enjoy. Want to learn more about West Windsor NJ? Just call or email Joe Giancarli.

When I was younger, I loved to play baseball. Countless summer days turned to dusk and my friends and I would still be out there...playing with passion to the best of our ability... until we could no longer see in the dark of the warm summer's night. There's something about the feel of a well hit baseball on a good wooden bat. You could feel it in your hands at the moment of impact. It felt good... solid and strong. You immediately knew that your chances were good for getting on base. The coaches referred to this as "getting good wood on the ball', and it is what they tried to teach practice after practice. "It's a matter of good body mechanics and good timing" my coaches would say. But for me, it was mostly about timing.

When the game was slow, I was a real slugger. But as the kids grew bigger and stronger, their pitches came faster. Once they learned how to make the ball curve and slide away from me at the plate, the game got much, much harder. No longer would it be enough for me to get by with good body mechanics. Now I had to properly time my swing as well. I needed make a good decision as to what kind of pitch was coming, and I needed to do it quickly. Would it be a fastball or a curve ball? They all looked the same to me as they left the pitcher's hand!! I found myself taking far too long to decide which pitches to swing at. ‘Stop over thinking it" my coaches would instruct. "Just get some good wood on the ball!" But try as I might, my swing came too late. If I was lucky enough to make contact, it was rarely on the good wood...the "fat part of the bat". The feeling in my hands became different. The contact felt "thin" and weak. At times... especially on colder days, my hands stung. I finally came to understand why playing competitive ball...I mean really competitive ball...is enjoyed by so few. It's so damn hard to see the ball, decide what you're looking at, and know what to do about it before it gets past you. All the body mechanics in the world couldn't make up for this fact. And it was during these split seconds of indecision at the plate that my childhood dream of playing professional ball died.

I fear that so many of today's buyers are at risk of suffering the same cruel fate. As the market as cooled over the past few years, so many have decided to wait...believing that they can "properly time their swing" in the marketplace. The have become real scholars of price trends and watch interest rates like a hawk. I would argue that there are some that have an even better handle on these issues than many licensees working out there today. But the problem with timing the market lies in the complex ingredients that make up affordability: price vs. interest rates. Let's oversimplify things a little and plot them both out on this "V" diagram. Historically when prices are on the higher side of the diagram, affordability is achieved through lowering the interest rates on the other side. When prices are on the low end of the diagram, banks can charge a higher rate on their side without diminishing affordability too much. We are finding it helpful to have our buyer's mark a diagram like this one with the points where they believe price and interest were during different markets. During the late 1970's it was low prices vs. high interest. And in our recent run up market? We were dealing with low interest rates vs. higher prices. But what about today's market? Today's buyers are facing an unprecedented opportunity with historically low interest AND affordable prices. And yet so many of them are still waiting.

I call the bottom part of this diagram (the part circled here) the "sweet spot" in this housing market. It's the point where you will get good wood on the ball if you decide to swing. And it's the place where the market is TODAY. Could you wait just a bit longer and get to the absolute bottom point on the diagram...where prices and rates are both the lowest? Probably not. The only way to know for sure where the bottom lies is to see it from the other side. And today's real estate game is getting harder. It's tougher than ever to see the ball, decide what you're looking at and decide what to do before it gets past you. In my market, there is an enormous amount of pent up buyer demand. When the media finally shouts "swing" from the stands, it will be far too late for many. "Stop over thinking it" we implore our buyers. "Just get some good wood on the ball!" The buyers who are listening to the coach are making contact and achieving success. The ones who are still waiting at the plate could easily strike out...their dream of home ownership going the way of my major league baseball career.

"Caught looking" is what my coach used to write in his notebook when I returned to the dugout. And let me tell you first hand...it's a lousy feeling.

Yesterday, one of my associates brought in a direct mail piece sent by one of the competing brokers in my marketplace. This particular broker is a very small franchise office (less than 10 associates) within one of the big name brands. On the mailer, the broker made the following statement "When it is time to sell, do not pay 5 to 6% of your homes value when you can receive the same high level professional service from a name you can trust for only 3 ½%." They went on to list the services included in their "premier full service plan" and even offered an unconditional service guarantee to prospective clients. An interesting business proposition...

What I find problematic about this pitch has little to do with the advertised fee. Whether this broker chooses to take a listing at a fee lower than I might is truly not my concern here. I'm all for competition in the marketplace. In my state, brokerage fees are fully negotiable. If someone creates a business model that is more competitive, I say go for it! (And let me see it...) What really troubles me about this flyer is that the broker has set their fee on the front end...without ever meeting a client, learning about their specific needs, or seeing their property. Can a real professional establish a fee for their service without knowing who they're working with or what the job requires? Of course not! All they can do is establish a fee for the stock services that they're willing to offer...regardless of the client's unique needs. And I believe that this "one size fits all approach" is bad for our profession.

What this broker is doing is exploiting 2 unfortunate perceptions that held by the public. The first is that Realtors are paid too much, and the second is that there is absolutely no difference between who we are as professionals and what we can accomplish for our clients. It's called the "commodity theory", and discount brokers have used it to leverage the market for years. The premise is as faulty as it is simple: each one of us does the same thing as the other, and achieves the same results as the other. So if there is no difference between brokers or agents, the only thing that matters is the price. Hey...do you compare the price on bananas when you go shopping? Probably not...a banana is a banana is a banana, right?

Wrong. If we want to be taken seriously as professionals, we need to protect our professionalism. And what a professional bring to the table is not their FEE, it's their VALUE. The truth is that some brokers and some agents have a higher level of skill, better tools and resources, and just outperform their peers. They achieve better results for the client. In a competitive marketplace, their services are more valuable...plain and simple. Would I be called upon to pitch an inning of relief for the NY Yankees in a tight playoff game? Nope...I just couldn't get the job done with my blistering 53 mph fastball! But Mariano Rivera can, and he's compensated accordingly. As I tell my associates time and time again...if you can't show WHY you're worth more...you're NOT worth more! The debate must be shifted away from "what the seller pays" to "what the seller gains". (If you want a really good read, check out Waging War on Real Estate's Discounters by Bernice Ross).

The truth is always in the numbers. According to our MLS, my office listings sell for a significantly higher sale to list price ratio than this broker achieves, and in significantly less time. In fact, our numbers are among the highest in our county. And in my market which is losing value at approximately 1% per month, these numbers matter...a lot. The VALUE that my team creates (at a modestly higher brokerage fee) produces a net gain to the seller at closing that far surpasses any potential savings generated by a discounted brokerage FEE...usually by 2-4% per transaction. As professional Realtors, we need to understand that this is the playing field where we can add the greatest VALUE for our clients. We need to know our own numbers, our company's numbers, and our competition's numbers. But what if we really aren't all that competitive by the numbers? Then find out what part of your professional game needs improvement and fix it! Do you need to get better at establishing the correct list price? Could you do better with your negotiation skills? Maybe we simply need to learn how to leverage Web 2.0 to achieve greater exposure and urgency for our listings. But in my view, a professional works on achieving better outcomes for their client...not on simply reducing their fees.

In a recession, people become afraid. And when people are afraid, they reach for what's comfortable. I get that. In today's struggling economy, there is real comfort created by the "sale price mentality". But as my father (a baby of the last great depression) always said "only the rich can afford to buy on the cheap" In the end, when we're shopping for the services of a proven professional...be it a surgeon, defense attorney, major league relief pitcher or a professional Realtor...one size NEVER fits all.

In the end, your clients usually get what they pay for.

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