Michael's Bergen Blog

In early May, Glen Rock Borough Council approved an ordinance governing the size of homes that can be built in the borough. Details can be found on the home page of Glen Rock's official website, http://GlenRockNJ.net. The new standards were adopted in an effort to keep properties from being overb...

Sales activity continues to show significant improvement over March levels, according to MLS data. In northwest Bergen County, including Ridgewood and surrounding boroughs, the number of homes under contract is down only 9.1% so far in May. And median sold prices, which were down 10.6% in April a...

Average sold home prices in Bergen were down 5.4% from April of last year, while median sold prices were down 10.6%. In March, median prices were down only 1.0% from the previous year. On a positive note, however, homes under contract closed the month with marked improvement. March activity was d...

The first half of April has shown significant improvement in sales activity in Bergen County. While March homes under contract were down 33% from March of 2007, April contracts are down less than 1% over the same period last year. Northwest Bergen in particular showed similar improvement, with co...

This week we take a look at the number of homes on the market and whether we have an oversupply situation. Below is a sampling of towns on the west side of Bergen County representing a wide range of home prices. Keep in mind that a balanced market is a four to six month supply.   Months Supply Fa...

The local real estate market is performing very differently than the national market. Locally, prices are more or less holding but sales activity is suffering more. A strange concurrence. Feb '08 vs Feb '07 Sales Activity Home Prices National -23.8 -8.2 Bergen County -33.7 0.3 Northwest Bergen -...

The news about the slowdown of the housing market is no longer surprising, even in Bergen County. Last week sales activity continued to be down sharply from last year (-19.8% across Bergen.) But the number of buyers actively looking is surprising. At my open house last weekend 35 groups came to s...

Englewood leads Bergen County in foreclosures with eight, according to Foreclosure.com. Lodi is second with four, and the following boroughs each have three: Garfield, Glen Rock and Rochelle Park. Twenty-two other other boroughs make the list with one or two foreclosures each. The site also lists...

See http://buyinginbergen.com/sales.html for all closings in Bergen County last week. (Updated every Monday.)

Three factors define the local market: price,inventory and activity. On two of them, our localmarket is doing quite well. On the third, we’rehurting big time.As you can see from the chart to the right,prices in Northwest Bergen were 3.3% higher inthe 4th quarter of ‘07 vs the same period a yearea...