How’s the Tinton Falls Real Estate Market?

The question that Realtors receive most often is, “How’s the market?”. The answer we give most often is, “It depends”. It depends on whether you’re a seller, a buyer or an investor. It depends on what town and neighborhood you’re talking about. It depends on whether you’re talking about commercial or residential; if it’s residential, it depends on whether you mean single-family homes or condominiums.

Recently I was asked about the Tinton Falls single-family home market, and since I haven’t seen anything written about it recently, I thought I should share my information with you. Tinton Falls is a large and diverse town, and we could look at only the section north/south of Route 18, or east/west of the Garden State Parkway. However, for this report let’s just look at Tinton Falls as a whole, and limit ourselves to sales of detached single-family homes as of the end of August. When we try to answer the question, “How’s the market?” it’s always best to use objective, measurable data, so here are the numbers:

Tinton Falls Home Sales, January - August (8 Months Year To Date)

    2011

    2012

        Comment

Sales (Demand)

      51

      50

2% fewer homes sold.

Listings (Supply)

      74

      52

30% fewer homes on market.

Months' Supply (Absorption Rate)

      8.8

      7.4

Almost a "normal market"

Note: this is the trailing 12 month number

Average Sale $ (Value)

$363,069

$360,810

1% lower average sales price.

Median Sale $ (Value)

$340,000

$337,500

1% lower median sales price.

Average Listing $

$383,817

$379,125

1% lower listing price.

 Average Sale $ / List $ %

   95%

   95%

Similar Sales $ / Listing $ %.

I’ve put the first 4 (demand, supply, absorption rate and value) in bold print because they are the most important. Some people also like to look at the average listing price and the average percentage of sales price to listing price.

So far this year there have been slightly fewer homes sold, and there are many fewer homes listed for sale than a year ago. That combination (slightly fewer sales, many fewer listings) normally predicts higher selling prices in the future.

 The next number, the real estate absorption rate, is an important one but it confuses a lot of people. Simply put, it’s a calculation of how long it would take to sell all of the homes currently on the market, assuming that homes continue to sell at the same rate as they have in the past 12 months. An absorption rate of 5 – 7 months is considered a “normal market”, whereas a number greater than 7 months is considered a “buyer’s market” and a number less than 5 months is considered a “seller’s market”. The Tinton Falls absorption rate fell from 8.8 months last year to 7.4 months now, so we can say that we’re still in a buyer’s market, but are heading closer to a normal market.

Buyers and sellers are most interested in price, but when we talk about a local area market we can talk about either the average price (total dollar amount of all of the sales divided by the number of sales) or the median price (the price at which 50% of the homes sold for more money and 50% sold for less money). For Tinton Falls as a whole, the two numbers are very close, but if we were dealing with fewer sales the median price might be a better guide, since the arithmetic average can be skewed by a few very high or very low numbers. So what do we have after 8 months? A 1% decrease in the average price and a 1% decrease in the median price for a detached single-family home. That looks pretty stable to me.

Bottom line? I think the Tinton Falls real estate market is stable both for buyers and sellers. Fewer listings and a lower real estate absorption rate point to possibly higher prices in the future, but the stable average and median prices say that prices are neither moving higher nor lower. Give me a call or send me an email if you’d like to talk about a given neighborhood or a specific house.

-          Len

Leonard “Len” Dunikoski

REALTOR® Associate

Diane Turton Realtors – Rumson Office

8 West River Road

Rumson, NJ 07760

(732) 239-0739  (cell)    (732) 530-6686 (office)

ldunikoski@dianeturton.com