Archive for the 'Living in Glen Ridge' Category

Home sellers in Glen Ridge and Montclair often ask me- should I renovate my kitchen before putting it on the market?  There is not always a straightforward answer but this may lend some insight.

Montclair rental - gone in 1 day

Real estate is always a “good news-bad news” business. The most obvious example of this is an overheated market: great news for home sellers, lousy news for home buyers.  An article I read recently in RISMedia,  an online trade publication, discusses another good news-bad news situation: the current rental market.

The article cited a study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, which concluded that the fledgling national economic recovery will actually hurt renters. More Americans are finding new jobs, but these jobs often pay less than their former ones, so they are choosing to rent a home instead of buying one.  In addition, the continuing foreclosure crisis means that many former homeowners can now only afford to rent. With no real increase in multifamily rental units planned by developers, rental units will almost certainly become scarcer and thus more expensive.

Montclair is already showing signs of upward pressure on the rental market – There are only 35 rental units at the moment listed on the MLS as compared to 230 that are currently for sale.  As a New Jersey Realtor, I have firsthand experience with this trend: I listed a 1 BR condo renting for $1850/month in a loft-type building in Glen Ridge, walking distance to the NYC train, on Saturday; by Monday, it was gone.

The good news in this scenario: a poor rental market often means it is a good time to buy a home. Mortgage rates are at their lowest in years, and home prices have dropped significantly from several years ago. Are you looking for more space for your growing family? Have you been considering buying a multifamily property as an investment? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, then take advantage of the good news (for buyers) and make your move before the tide turns again.

A recent New York Times article discusses the rise in short sales in Manhattan due to the recession. One market analyst said “2010 might well be dubbed the Year of the Short Sale nationally. ‘A short sale is going to be the only way for many people who bought at the peak and who are now underwater to move on with their lives if they have to relocate or downsize.’” Like Manhattan, Montclair, Glen Ridge Maplewood and the rest of Essex County have seen the number of short sales rise. When the alternative is foreclosure, selling a house through a short sale is a way for the owner to come out of the deal relatively unscathed. I discuss the issue of short sales further in Short Sales for Buyers and Short Sales for Sellers. If you have any questions about short sales, either because you’re thinking of selling your house short or you’re interested in buying a house that’s  a short sale, please email me for more information.

Glen Ridge, the beautiful little town that’s a short walk to the Bloomfield train to NYC, is teaching its children the blues. Local teacher and longtime musician Paul Byrne will be teaching children ages 7-11 the fundamentals of blues music with hands-on learning and a performance at the end of the 4-day program. This program is aimed at all local children, especially those at Linden Elementary School, and Glen Ridge parents are also leading an effort to replace old instruments and buy new ones for students in the middle and high school bands and jazz ensemble. Glen Ridge takes pride in its commitment to musical education.

Blues sessions are as follows:

* Week #1: Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 12 noon, Aug. 9, 10, 11 and 12.

* Week #2: Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 12 noon, Aug. 16, 17, 18 and 19.

* Week #3: Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 12 noon, Aug. 23, 24, 25 and 26.

Sessions are held at the Glen Ridge Senior-Community Center (train station), 228 Ridgewood Ave., Glen Ridge.

Registration for the four-session (Monday through Thursday), eight-hour program is $150.

Mail registrations to: Glen Ridge Recreation, 228 Ridgewood Ave., Glen Ridge, NJ 07028. The registration deadline is Friday, Aug. 6.

— For more information, e-mail Paul Byrne paul.byrne@verizon.net.

Via NorthJersey.com.

After closing on their bank-owned Colonial in Verona, one of the first “improvements” Bil and Ashli made was to add a vegetable garden to their backyard. They are predicting a prolific harvest of beans, onions, tomatoes, and Chinese sweet potatoes, of which they only eat the greens.

With 40,000 shade trees in Montclair, some gardeners have found that the backyard is just too shady to grow vegetables. A front yard flower and vegetable patch, however, is always an option, and can even replace the entire front lawn, giving the house a verdant and functional appeal. Robin of Glen Ridge has replaced her front lawn with a beautiful and bountiful combination of flowers and edibles. In her garden of Eden she grows rhubarb, cucumbers, beets, lettuce, squash, and herbs.

Montclair resident and food writer Laura has a front yard garden that is bordered by stones and integrates flowers and vegetables in the European fashion. This design, which runs along the path to her front door, works especially well because it welcomes visitors into her pleasant home and busy kitchen.

As for me, I have also established my raised-bed garden in the front yard, the only place that gets consistent sun.

Many real estate agents hate Zillow.   But not for the reason you think.  When Zillow was launched a couple of years ago the word on the street was that agents would lose their usefulness in helping sellers determine their home’s value.  That turns out to be far from the truth—which is that agents have to spend an awful lot of time explaining Zillow’s  inaccuracies.

Here’s the beef.  Zillow is a huge aggregator of data.  They use info uploaded by real estate agents (not always accurate), tax assessment data and comparable sales.  Then use a proprietary formula to calculate a “Zestimate.”  But they have no way of accounting for hyper local conditions, for example, a house that has not been updated for 50 years. Or a house that backs up to a gas station.  Or a house with a fabulous view (that the house next door may not have because it’s blocked by trees).  These are factors that only a human being with local expertise can work in to the house value equation. In fact Zillow’s self-reported level of accuracy in the Northern New Jersey Market is a median error of about 12 %.

In other words, half the houses sell for within 12% of its Zestimate.  And the other half do not.

Only 25% of homes sold for within 5% of the Zillow estimate.  That means you can count on Zillow to be really accurate only about a quarter of the time!

When Zillow is wrong, it can be really wrong. Take this house in Glen Ridge which recently sold for 380,000.  Zillow’s estimate was 573,000.  Can you imagine the agent trying to convince the seller that despite what Zillow says the house is actually worth almost 200,000 less?  Here’s what Zillow didn’t know about this house.  It needed extensive repair and was owned by a bank that wanted to get rid of it as fast as possible.

The take away is that no computer can substitute for a careful assessment by a qualified human.  While Zillow may work well for communities that have a very homogeneous stock of houses (think Levittown), it does not work as well for towns like Montclair and Glen Ridge where a two million dollar home is often a block or two away from a four hundred thousand dollar home.

On the bright side—isn’t it good to know that human experience and judgment still beat out the computer?

When I walk to Watchung Plaza from my Montclair home, I take a short route  through an interconnected grid of streets and through a small park.  I wave to my neighbor on the way.  I stop for a brief minute in the park to chat with a friend who’s on her way home from work (she’s just gotten off the 5:31 train from Manhattan).  It’s social.  It’s interactive.  It’s exercise.  It’s green.

On the other hand, it’s very difficult to walk to the train station, or the corner store to get milk in a town that is laid out in a branching street pattern with a series of dead-ends -aka cul-de-sacs- feeding in to a main artery. In these configurations, you can be a stone’s throw from your destination, but have to travel a mile to get there.  This may be a satisfactory layout for the car but not for the pedestrian or bike rider.

Watch this very clever video from the Congress for New Urbanism and you’ll see what I mean…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJt_YXIoJI

For years, New Jersey was sprawling westward, northward, and southward with real estate development in formerly rural areas. Now the recession has hit and so many of those big new shiny houses a couple of hours outside the city are losing value rapidly—despite their newness, their immense pasture-like lawns, and quiet isolation. What seemed like a good idea a few years ago is suddenly languishing in the for-sale market.

That’s why now seems like a good time to start talking about why density is good for the planet and good for humans. Yes, density. The word has a bit of a negative connotation. But you’ll get past that. These days, many young families want to live in areas where they can walk places, shop in their towns, spend less time in cars and get to the city quick.  Density is also a good investment.  In the recent economic downturn, towns on train lines have been holding real estate values far better than those far from urban centers.

Walkable Suburb is my new website and blog.  And it’s the focus of my New Jersey real estate business. You can find out more about density, new urbanism and what makes New Jersey’s inner-ring suburbs like Montclair, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, South Orange and Maplewood, walkable suburbs.  These towns were built early in the last century with walking, community, and public transportation in mind. They are increasingly desirable and make sense for the world today.

Welcome to Walkable Suburb. Please drop in from time to time or sign up for my monthly summaries via email or my RSS feed. I hope to keep the journey interesting with insights, market analysis, and tips for life and real estate in New Jersey’s best walkable suburbs.