Cooler fall temperatures have brought less intense housing market conditions to the once white-hot market of Bergen County, New Jersey.
“We are not seeing that same buyer frenzy we were seeing six months ago,” said Audra Fontanella, the broker-owner of Bergen County-based RE/MAX Venture Realtors. “We are seeing some price drops start to happen and a little bit longer days on market.”
Fontantella isn’t the only one seeing slower market conditions in Bergen County. The Altos Research Market Action Index score for the county has dropped from a 90-day average of 54.63 in early May to 47.88 as of Sept. 27. Altos considers anything above 30 to be indicative of a seller’s market.
Additionally, the median number of days on market has risen from a seven-day average of 21 in early May to 42 days at the end of September, while the share of properties with price cuts has jumped from 9.5% to 17.3%.
But while the market has cooled, local agents say it isn’t tepid.
“If you price the house right, you are still seeing a lot of interest and offers,” said Danny Yoon, an Edgewater, New Jersey-based agent for Sotheby’s International Realty. “I am currently dealing with more buyers than before, but there is less pressure right now on buyers to pull the trigger and put in an offer on something.”
According to Fontanella, the pace of the market depends on the price range.
“Homes that are priced in that medium price range, which here is anything under $600,000, is still moving very quickly,” Fontanella said. “We are still seeing about seven to 10 days on market, but when you get up in price a little bit to things above $1 million, they are taking a bit longer to sell, and we are seeing the price reductions there.”
Altos data shows that homes in the top quartile of the market, which have a median price of $2.99 million, are sitting on the market for a median of 105 days. This compares to 21 days for homes with a median price of $590,000.
Still, regardless of price point, if homes are priced well, agents say they are still seeing multiple-offer situations.
“We are seeing multiple offers definitely in those medium price ranges. Anywhere up to $800,000 or $900,000, we are potentially seeing multiple offers,” Fontantella said. “When you start hitting $1 million, you sometimes aren’t getting multiple offers, and when you do it is more like five or six, whereas before we were getting 20 or 30 offers.
“It has definitely downshifted, but in most cases, I am still seeing listing agents putting out deadlines for best and final offers.”
According to Lisa Comito, the president of Greater Bergen Realtors and a broker at Howard Hanna Rand Realty. the county’s ongoing bidding wars are a symptom of an inventory-starved market.
“Inventory is tight partly due to interest rates, but even with rates going down, I don’t see that moving the needle that much,” Comito said. “Really, in this area, it is because builders are building things for rent — not things people can buy — and that really does effect the inventory.”
As of Sept. 27, the county had a 90-day average of 909 active single-family listings. Although that figure is up from 570 at the start of March 2024, is still far below the 3,000-plus listings recorded in September 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, a 90-day average of only 117 new listings came on the market at the end of September, down from a height of 239 in July 2021.
Local agents attribute much of the lack of existing inventory to homeowners locked in at pandemic-era low mortgage rates, but Fontanella said this isn’t the only issue.
“There is very little inventory for would-be home sellers to purchase and move into right now, and it is very hard for them to buy with a home-sale contingency because there are so many buyers out there right now without a contingency,” she said.
These challenges have led to some buyer fatigue, which Fontanella said has resulted in some of her agents’ buyers deciding to take a step back from the market.
“There is definitely frustration among buyers,” she said. “It gets discouraging. Buyers in general, if they aren’t getting offers accepted after the third, fourth or fifth try, they are definitely deciding to take a break.”
Agents don’t expect the county’s inventory situation to improve, and that any further interest rate decreases by the Federal Reserve will only increase demand and place more strain on the county’s limited for-sale housing supply. But they also believe the recent slowdown indicates that the market is returning to normal seasonal trends.
“I think this is very seasonal and it is normal,” Comito said. “It hasn’t cooled that much, just slightly, and this is the time of year when everyone is getting back into the school year routine. Even the agents sort of step back at the end of summer and start of school as they settle into the fall.”
Looking ahead, despite any shifts that may occur due to more interest rate cuts and the results of the November election, local agents are expecting a seasonally cool winter with an uptick in activity come spring.
“For the past two years, I feel like we have followed more seasonal trends,” Yoon said. “The early spring has actually been pretty good for me recently because people try to buy before the start of the actual spring market. But inventory is even tighter then, so sellers get more offers and higher prices, but then spring comes and the sellers hit the market.”
