Looking Back at 2010 – Have We Reached the Bottom and Are We On Our Way Back Up?
ByEvery year I compile real estate statistics for the Downbeach area (Ventnor, Margate, Longport) & Atlantic City, and compare them to the previous year.1 So let’s take a look at the 2010 real estate numbers2 and see if the market was really as bad as most people are complaining it is. I was quite surprised with what I found based on all the negative noise about the market.
Average Selling Price of Properties Sold - 2003 through 2010
I compile my reports in two ways. The first report takes all sales in a specific town/city and lumps them into one number for average sales price3, median sales price4 and number of units sold. This is a big picture, broad look at the market. The second report breaks down the sales into much more defined categories for the different geographic areas such as 1, 2, 3 etc. bedroom condos, 1, 2, 3 etc. bedroom single family homes, commercial, and land. It is a much more in depth, detailed look at how a specific type of property sold in a specified time frame.
For the purpose of this summary re-cap, this is just an overview of what the broad based numbers reported.1 If you would like the details of the other reports broken down by type of property, please e-mail me and I will be happy to send them to you.
Margate: Based on the 2010 statistics, Margate might have reached its bottom in 2010 and is now headed up. The average selling price increased 10% over 2009 from $529,133 to $583,498. The median sales price increased 3% from 2009 to 2010 from $450,000 to $462,500. But the real gem in the market numbers is that the number of units sold increased 24% from 2009 from 189 to 235! Wow!! So prices are increasing in Margate and more properties are selling at these higher prices.
Median Selling Price of Properties - 2003 through 2010
Longport: These numbers were also very interesting. Like Margate, the number of units sold from 2009 to 2010 increased a whopping 24%. But what was also interesting is that the median price decreased 30% and average sales price went down 24%. The problem with Longport numbers is that it is a small area, and so few properties sold in general, that it is hard to get statistically meaningful numbers. A change from 29 units to 36 units sold is not very many to create a good sample pool. If there is one or two more sales in the year, then the median & average prices can change dramatically. Also, prices ranged widely, from $190,000 to $5,000,000. Again, with such a small number of units and such a large range, it is very hard to obtain a median and average price that is statistically significant.
Ventnor: The Ventnor market appears to be relatively stable with a slight decrease in prices from 2009 to 2010. The number of units sold increased a modest 3% from 183 to 189. The median sales price decreased by 8% to $247,000 and average sales price went down by 7% to $346,585. Hopefully 2011 will bring higher sales prices and the number of units sold will continue to increase.
Atlantic City: Unfortunately, the Atlantic City market appears to have taken a big hit in the last year. This is because this market is heavily investor driven and everyone knows that the investors just aren’t “investing” in speculative real estate these days. Unit sales dropped from 256 to 223 for a decrease of 13%. But what is even more painful is that the median price dropped 23% and the average sales price dropped 21%. OUCH!! And these prices have been dropping since 2006 (not quite at this rate, but still dropping). Again, let’s hope 2011 brings stabilization of this market. Once Revel starts building again, the investors should follow.
Number of Units Sold Downbeach Area - 2003 through 2010
If you would like the full detail of these reports, please e-mail your request to me and I will be happy to send you the full market information in table format (which is very easy to read!).
Let’s hope that 2011 brings only positive changes to these market indicators. Margate already has reversed the downward trend and Ventnor seems to be stabilizing.
As always, I am here to answer any questions you have regarding the Jersey Shore real estate market.
Sherri Lilienfeld, REALTOR Associate, Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors, 609-287-1795 (cell), Sherri@NJ-ShoreRealEstate.com
1Data obtained from the South Jersey Regional MLS
2Numbers as of 1/12/2011
3Average is a number regarded as typical of a group of numbers, obtained by adding each member of the group and dividing the total by the number of members.
4Median is one type of average, found by arranging the values in order and then selecting the one in the middle. If the total number of values in the sample is even, then the median is the mean of the two middle numbers. The median is a useful number in cases where the distribution has very large extreme values which would otherwise skew the data.
