As the Market Turns

The Asbury Park Press finally got around to covering the housing bubble today and published a pretty decent article describing what readers of this blog already know, that the real estate market at the shore has peaked. Some of the anecdotal quotes in the article are insightful and seem to confirm that house selling activity and prices have stalled.


[Home prices continued to increase in the third quarter in the region that includes Monmouth and Ocean counties, but there are signs that rising mortgage rates and other factors are cooling off what has been a sizzling housing market, real estate and mortgage brokers say.

The median price of an existing single-family home increased by 13.6 percent for the quarter, to $389,900, compared with a year earlier in Monmouth, Ocean, Middlesex and Somerset counties, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. (The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less.)

While the double-digit increase is well above the inflation rate, it is down from the second quarter, when the median price in the region increased by 22.8 percent compared with a year earlier.

"The market has turned," said Drew Anlas, sales manager at Select Mortgage Corp. in Brick. "Things are stabilizing."]

Here is the e-mail of the reporter who wrote the story if anyone wants to ask him if he plans on doing any other stories.

wconroy@app.com