Archive for the 'Living in Nutley' Category

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…

 

 

One of the metrics that buyers use to judge a property is days-on-market (DOM).  Days-on-market is important because it describes how long a property has been for sale without an accepted offer.  After months of increases, many market areas in Essex County have seen DOM leveling off – a good sign for sure, but Nutley has seen  a distinct drop in DOM.  Since April of this year DOM has decreased from a high of 235 to about 180 – a drop of 55 days in the last 4 months – almost 25%.   Notice also that the decline has been consistent and steady for the last 4 months.

 

 

Is this alone evidence of a market turnaround for 07110?  No but its’ a positive sign and  the first step.  This is how the chain of events will happen: First DOM will decrease, which will cause inventory to fall (if homes sell faster, then fewer will be on the market at any given time).  Then with supply decreasing and demand increasing prices will begin to rise again.  Demand is increasing because interest rates remain low and prices have dropped making houses in Nutley affordable once again.