Urban Vs. Suburban Living

This NY Times article describes some of the reasons for the relative strength of the NJ Gold Coast (Jersey City, Hoboken, Edgewater, etc.) versus that of the suburbs.

snip...

Executives from other major home building companies active in New Jersey like Tarragon Properties, K. Hovnanian Homes and the Pinnacle Companies also talked of urban projects as strong performers despite a general market malaise.

Ms. Skarka is a vice president at Lennar Urban Northeast, a division of the national company that is a partner in developing Port Imperial, a $2.1 billion mixed-use project spanning nearly two miles on the Hudson waterfront in Weehawken, West New York and Guttenberg, all a short ferry ride from Manhattan. Lennar is also completing two projects in the Morristown town center and starting one in downtown Atlantic City.

“The suburban market is still moving along” in New Jersey, Ms. Skarka said, despite the severely slowed sales pace and falling prices of the last six months. People are still buying single-family homes, she said, “but as a company, we’ve been focusing on our urban division for a while now because that’s where things are going really well,” and home values are holding up better, too.

snip...

For example, in Edgewater, where Tarragon is opening One Hudson Park, a glass condo tower, sales have been slower than expected. Young professionals are signing contracts in the numbers expected, Mr. Friedman said, but not empty-nesters.

“The empty-nesters have to sell the houses they have,” he said, “and they’re having trouble doing that.”

Full article...

I think the last paragraph says a lot about the state of the market. The natural buyer of an empty nester home in Chatham is the two bedroom seller in Hoboken or Jersey City. The owners of the two bedroom condo are trying to sell into a market with tons of new supply coming on line from Toll, Taragon, Hovnanian, Trump and they can't get the price they need to buy the Chatham home.