At A Glance: Mendham, NJ
Mendham Boro & Twp., NJ - Morris County
Mendham from City-Data
Listings As of 3/24
Total Active Listings: 129
Up To $500,000: 6
$500,001 - $1,000,000: 45
$1,000,001 And Up: 78
Listing Activity Since 3/1
37 Added
3 Back on Market
19 Price Reductions
18 Under Contract
14 Sold
8 Expired
5 Withdrawn
2 Temporarily Withdrawn
February Sales Activity
Up To $500,000: 1
$500,001 - $1,000,000: 1
$1,000,001 And Up: 7
Sales Prices were 8.84% below Original List Prices
(All data from GSMLS)
Mendham from City-Data
Listings As of 3/24
Total Active Listings: 129
Up To $500,000: 6
$500,001 - $1,000,000: 45
$1,000,001 And Up: 78
Listing Activity Since 3/1
37 Added
3 Back on Market
19 Price Reductions
18 Under Contract
14 Sold
8 Expired
5 Withdrawn
2 Temporarily Withdrawn
February Sales Activity
Up To $500,000: 1
$500,001 - $1,000,000: 1
$1,000,001 And Up: 7
Sales Prices were 8.84% below Original List Prices
(All data from GSMLS)
44 Comments:
Please start a new list for the towns you'd like to see featured here. Yes, I know it's a pain for you but it makes my life easier.
grim
Mahwah - condos/townhouses
Hanover Township
To play devil's advocate... I don't think that prices in Mendham will drop in the next 12-18 months. Can anyone tell me why I'm wrong. PS I don't really believe this, but I need some reassurance. As always, fantastic blog you got here Grim
Hoboken
sparta (lake mohawk)
Morris Plains, please.
ASA
Doubting Anonymous,
Isn't it true that a rising tide lifts all boats?
The same forces that pushed prices up over the past five years will have the same effect on the downside.
When the tide goes all all the boats will fall.
As other areas fall, their value in comparison will rise, thus making them more attractive.
Demand will fall in the areas whose prices remained elevated. Thus, sellers there will need to drop prices to sell.
The cycle is viscious and the market works to push prices in both directions..
I've heard that argument made for just about every town in NJ save for Paterson or Newark..
grim
I think Mendham prices will drop before they do in towns like Summit, Short Hills and Upper Montclair. Mendham does not have as many NYC commuters (who are more willing to shell out the big bills), and thus less demand. Also seems like there is always more inventory in Mendham, and you can always get more for your money there relative to the towns I mentioned previously). Just my 2 cents. Cheers.
(cont)
Appreciation in the past 5 or 6 years was not due to market imbalances and changes in local markets.
Here is an example of what I mean.
Town X borders on town Y. Town Y has a train station, and is seen as being more valuable than X.
Town X decides they need a station as well, and they build one. Home prices increase in town X as a result of being seen as more valuable. Values in Y may fall due to the fact that the advantage was removed.
What happened in Mendham over the past 6 years to increase prices?
Nothing. It was speculative mania and liquidity that caused the price increases there.
grim
Grim and Chicago - you too are geniuses...thank you for giving me a lesson on economics...
I would love to see Waldwick featured...relatively affordable compared to it's surrounding towns - Ridgewood and Upper Saddle River...also has a NJ transit train station
Parsippany/Troy Hills Please..
Montgomery,Princeton & south brunswick
Grim,
I would like to see Berkley Heights and Princeton (though I think you said before that you can't get data on Mercer County).
By the way, I'm been reading your blog for the last couple months. Before that I couldn't figure out how people could be living so large in NJ. Everywhere I looked people had expensive clothes, cars, families, homes, etc. My fiancee and I together make well over the median income >150K & we are renting until things come back down to Earth. I have smart, well educated friends who still believe real estate always goes up.
PS excellent analysis on your blog
As for Mendham we have been looking there for a couple of years now. There is a great deal of speculators there and we think that Mendham will be reducing faster than other locations. Also, we have some friends there and they all have the interest only deals and they cannot really afford the houses they are in at this time. So I think you are going to see it actually drop faster
njresident286,
I fully agree with your comments about overrated schools. I have friends and have seen others that get obsessed with living in areas with the "top" schools and high test scores. As an ivy league graduate, I did not come from a top high school at all. I fully believe that actual intelligence and parental involvement (of both parents) is far more important. And you don't have to go to an ivy-league university either to be successful. I don't believe that my classmates were brillant. By the way, my fiancee teaches in one of those "top" blue ribbon districts and she agrees too.
BTW, I didn't mean to imply that I was brilliant either. In fact, I think my ivy-league mba was probably a poor investment.
"I think paying an extra 75k for a similiar house in a town good school is crazy"
It's worth $75K to me that my kids have a lower probability of getting involved with drugs, and a higher probability of going to a good college.
NJgal,
You may be right.
And Anon @ 3:04, don't assume there are not drugs in "good schools." My roommate in college came from a very "good" district & $$$ town in NJ and I was surprised when he told me about drug use there. But then again, after all, who can afford expensive drugs?
njgal - I know you mentioned you are from LI. So am I, from what has always been considered to be a cra ppy school district (Hicksville) but many of my fellow students turned out to be highly successful. A friend of mine is from Valley Stream said her high school was unbelievably lousy with lots of drugs, but yet it ranked quite high in the rankings. She said it was because the school had a high Jewish population and the parents there were very involved and had tutoring, etc for their children to make sure that their kids did well. And db at 3:15, that's another excellent point. Rich kids definitely do drugs since they can afford it. Parent involvement is the key on all of these issues!!!
njresident286,
I agree that a great deal of luck is involved with one's career success. If you look at a big corporation with a lot of driven, well-educated employees, it takes a lot of things including a bit of luck to rise to the top. There was a recent study that showed over the last 20 years the educational pedigrees of forture 500 CEOs contained far less ivy league and similar schools. Sometimes we focus too much on the wrong things. I am guily of that too.
Skep-tic,
I would put my money on the Mass school kids too. I didn't mean to get into a bad/good school discussion. I just meant that maybe there isn't that much a difference between ok and excellent schools to a really smart child, especially when it comes to learning the basics.
I hope I didn't throw off Grim's original focus too much. Back to real estate, all my fiancee and I are looking for is a 3 bedroom 2 bath home in a town with a train station, but as everyone here knows, the price is not right (yet).
Chatham
Re: train stations
I wouldn't count Ridgewood, Mahwah, Ramsey, Glen Rock and Ho-ho-kus in that analysis
Shailesh Gala said...
Grim Wrote: Town X borders on town Y. Town Y has a train station, and is seen as being more valuable than X.
my two cents....
mendham and chester will have a vastly different landscape in the next decade. I think because of the build out of train stations, light rail etc is the reason many people started moving and increased developments. The new trend seems to be transit village downtown scapes and the return of boutique shopping etc. Ridgewood and Westfield have similar downtown areas... i'm at work... just blabbing
-TM
Shailesh Gala said...
NJGAL: if you're from Montana, you have a better shot of getting into Harvard than if you're from NJ.
Why you feel that way? Wouldn't folks from NJ better prepared for future, as they live close to many businesses and are with folks who are more competitve?
4:48 PM
No.
No matter how I slice it or dice it, access to manhattan mass transit is one of the biggest selling points of a Northern NJ town.
http://www.njtransit.com/images/map_november2003.jpg
How do you argue with that?
grim
Should have added the usual disclaimer:
That fact was priced into the area long before the current housing bubble was a glimmer in greenspans eye.
jb
I think keeping the private school option open is a smart play considering prices and taxes in the best rated school districts..
jb
From CNN/Money:
At long last, a new home sale slump
Sales in February drop more than expected, as median price falls and supply grows. Is the real estate bubble bursting?
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/24/news/economy/newhome_sales
Rich school district - expensive drugs, poor school district - cheap drugs + they get caught more often. I spent several months on a grand jury in Somerset and what is really interesting is that the "good" school districts were the one with all of the underage sex stuff going on (parties, involvement with friends parents, all sorts of stuff). Too much money and too much time on their hands leads to sophisticated kids who mature too quickly. The other disadvantage with the "premium" school districts is there is a lot of pressure on the kids to have the right clothes and the right car and the kids that don't really suffer.
I also had a friend who worked with social services as a laison to schools and the premium districts spend a lot of time and energy hiding their problems and their problem kids in order to maintain their status.
The best is to avoid the best and the worst, most impoverished ones and go with reasonable middle class districts. The schools are usually decent but not overhyped, the housing is cheaper, there is less emphasis on conspicuous consumption and aspiring parents are usually involved parents.
I would like to see the North Hudson, lower Bergen County waterfront area, specially Edgewater with all that construction on the chemical landfill/ former superfund waste sites
Ok, my friend lives in Mendham, if you are planning to live there GET A RADON TEST. The city sits on some fault lines and Radon is all over the place. If you find it, make sure it's remeditated. Lung cancer sucks.
Whatever you do, get a killer Housing Inspector unaffiliated with your realtor. My realtor was shitting bricks when my housing inspector spent FOUR hours checking out my intended house, walked on the roof, checked every outlet to ensure the circuits were polarized correctly, spent an hour in the basement stabbing the foundation and checking for termites he took pictures of EVERYTHING.. He was FABULOUS (and not the cheapest-but it's worth it)! My Realtor wanted Johnny Idiot Inspector who takes a checklist and then checks off between 1 and 5. My guy delivers an actual report and lists every piddling thing wrong with the house. FABULOUS.
Could you please include Iselin in the Middlesex county ?
Anyway, here's another asking atrocity. A home was listed at 339 and quickly brought down to 299 and sold. The house next door, same size, model etc. has come on market right after this sale asking for 359. I dunno what kind of upgrades they have in there - gold knobs for the doors perhaps, marble floors all over maybe, who knows. The attitude still seems to be like 'what is lost by asking afterall, let us simply ask away !'.
It will be several months before we get know the actual sale prices.
About 2 years back we were set on moving to Peapack & Gladstone, we visited a number of older houses. Almost every home we saw had a radon remediation system.
Let me just tell you, there is something very uncomfortable about seeing radioactive warning signs in your basement.
grim
Trish, your fabulous inspector must have been the guy from Westfield (ACE) or Dover (Shelterworks), or Franklin Lakes (Foremost). They are real inspectors. The overpaid real estate tour guides cringe when they see their trucks coming! They actually have ladders and have real accredations.
It's worth $75K to me that my kids have a lower probability of getting involved with drugs, and a higher probability of going to a good college.
There are a lot of drugs in those overpriced areas as well. A price tag and socioeconomics does not prevent drugs and other societal problems from penetrating those walls. I know more people in Bedford, NY and Greenwich, CT that have a lot of deep problems--they just hide them better behind there gated estates.
Don't fool yourself!
Could someone elaborate a little further about why Mendham has Radon everywhere?
Mendham radon- Not quite everywhere- Morris county in general is about 50-50 Tier 1 (High Radon Potential) and Tier 2 (Moderate Radon Potential) according to the NJ State Radon Map.
Radon is from the breakdown of naturally occurring uranium in the soil and rocks. Montclair has the added bonus of have been a radioactive dump area from a company who made glow in the dark watch dials years ago, I think it was called "The Radium Watch Dial Company". Many of the young girls who hand painted the dials with radium paint, sharpened the points of their brushes by wettting them in their mouths. Most died from mouth and digestive tract cancer years later.
"There are a lot of drugs in those overpriced areas as well."
Many replies such as this confuse "probability" with "guarantee."
There's no guarantee your kid will be better off in a nice town with good schools, but there's a greater probability.
I know that this is not northern NJ but I would like to see middlesex county in here. Like Woodbridge, Edison, Piscataway, etc..
Hi Grim Ghost - My housing inspector was Shelterworks (Dover). I really liked him and thought he did an excellent job. My Realtor is a dual agent for me and the seller so I didn't accept her choice of housing inspectors. My attorney (a legal pit bull in human form) has used him for the past 20 years and is very satisfied with his work. He may be too anal for some people, but if you are spending 400K on a house, you want to know that your investment is safe and that the foundation isn't going to crumble after the closing. Good luck!
Thank you for providing the name of the inspector... I also agree that most of them are idiots. 10 years ago mine didn't report that the roof leaked, there was no drip loop in the electrical wiring and that we had a wet basement.
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