United States – And now, a brief pause for some real estate porn.

Admit it. It is hard not to check to see how much that house down the street went for, and how a “comparable sale” will affect your Plan B, where you sell the Essex County domicile for $whatever-hundred-thousand, then escape to a sweet cabin in Granite Falls, Wash., only $99,000, and live for x years without having to work a lick.

Not that we were browsing real estate ads while on vacation recently.

Especially with the revaluation looming in Maplewood, a list of recent house sales can be informative. So check out Keller Williams Realty’s “Keys To New Jersey” listings of the activity in our towns.

For starters, it’s pretty interesting that the three municipalities had almost identical numbers of houses on the market in recent months: Maplewood had 108, South Orange had 109, and Millburn and Short Hills had 105.

In August, Maplewood led the pack with 46 homes under contract, followed by Millburn /Short Hills with 36 and South Orange with 34.

The real difference shows in the number of houses sold. Maplewood had twice as many — 20 — as South Orange did. Short Hills had 21, and Millburn had 13.

There’s quite a difference in turnover rates among the communities. At the described rate of sales, it would take 62 weeks to clear out the inventory in South Orange, but only 13 weeks in Millburn.

As for prices, Maplewood sellers seemed to fare better in (yes! could it be?) bidding wars, with 8 of those 20 sales coming in above the asking price.

Continue reading…

By Tina Kelley

Source: Mapplewood, Blog, New York Times