Asbury Park, a Bustling Beach Spot South of New York City, Is Thriving

First developed as an oceanfront resort in the late 1800s, the once down-at-the-heels Jersey Shore community of Asbury Park has seen quite a renaissance and rebirth in recent years.

Celebrated on the cover of Bruce Springsteen’s debut album in 1972, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.,” the 1.6-square-mile Monmouth County city is still famous for its music scene along with its great Atlantic Ocean beach and bustling centerpiece boardwalk.

“One of the great things about Asbury Park is that it’s open year-round, and some of these shore towns are not,” said Joe Scheeler, broker associate and office manager, Ward Wight Sotheby’s International Realty in Asbury Park. In some nearby beach communities, restaurants start closing just after Labor Day. “Ours stay open. The off-season is busy.”

Scheeler and his husband, Tim Cantrell, started coming down to Asbury Park about 15 years ago as weekenders from their primary residences in the North Jersey cities of Hoboken and Jersey City.

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“We decided to migrate here full time about 10 years ago,” and they now live in a single-family house a couple of blocks from the beach, Scheeler said.

With an office on Cookman Avenue, Asbury’s main commercial drag, Scheeler now works full time selling real estate while Cantrell commutes to his job in New York City five days a week by train.

“That’s another great thing about Asbury,” Scheeler said. “It has a really strong connection to New York, and it’s easy to get down here.” 

“We were concerned about leaving the New York area, but there is always something to do here,” he said. “Our weekends are oversubscribed.”

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Along with the train option, many commuters drive to Highlands, New Jersey, and hop on a high-speed ferry to Manhattan, said Jim Kesling, sales associate, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Signature Properties in Asbury Park.

“The big things about Asbury are diversity, entertainment, access and our historic architecture,” he said, also noting its “thriving music scene.”

“My grandparents owned a house in Asbury in the 1960s,” Kesling said. “I remember that big Beaux-Arts-style palace on the beach as a five-year-old.”

As an adult looking for a good spot for a second home, “I made my first trip down from the city in the spring of 2002,” he said. “I made offers on two places my first day down here.” 

Kesling kept his house in North Jersey for about three years before buying a 1921 one-and-a-half-story house across from Deal Lake and moving to Asbury full time.

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Boundaries

The 158-acre Deal Lake forms the northern and part of the western boundary of Asbury Park, with the communities of Allenhurst and Deal on the other side of the lake, Kesling said. The Atlantic Ocean forms the eastern edge of the city, with Ridge Avenue and Ocean Township forming the remainder of the western boundary.

To the south, the next-door communities of Ocean Grove and Bradley Beach are just on the other side of Lake Avenue.

Price Range

“It’s a pretty wide price range here,” Scheeler said. “Prices are very dependent on proximity to the beach.”

Most condos sell from about $230,000 up to $3.8 million for a prime unit at a full-service building, such as the Asbury Ocean Club, that offers a hotel component and lots of amenities, he said. 

Citywide, the median price for condos is $534,000, Scheeler said. “Anything in the mid-$500,000s is doing well.”

The median price for a single-family house is $699,000, Scheeler said.

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At the very top of the market, a single-family house in town sold for a record-breaking $2.2 million this past summer, Kesling said. “It was a flip, and they added an in-ground pool.”

Because of Covid-19, single-family homes over the last couple of years have fared better than condos because people “want that privacy and a backyard, their own private spaces,” Scheeler said. “Condos with outdoor spaces have also done well.”

“Houses with pools are very attractive now,” which was not the case five years ago, he said. Unsurprisingly, Asbury homes closest to the ocean tend to be larger and with higher price points.

Housing Stock

A lot of the single-family homes in town were built in the 1920s, with condos going up in the 1960s and ’70s, Scheeler said. There are still some areas that are getting full gut renovations and some newer construction. 

Single-family homes are predominant in the northeast part of town, with condos more prevalent downtown and in other parts of the southeastern section of the city, Scheeler said.

A lot of houses in town have a composite style of architecture, Kesling said. His own house, an “Arts and Crafts house with Colonial and Federal characteristics,” is typical.

The city also has an “interesting mix of grand old Victorian houses from the 1870s onward,” many of which were divided up into multi-family homes and rooming houses, he said.

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Kesling remembers seeing lots of boarded-up buildings after he moved to town and began selling real estate. “I used to bring a screwdriver with me to show houses,” in case he needed a tool to take down plywood to get inside, he said.

“Back then, the beach was pretty desolate,” he added. These days, he estimated nine out of 10 houses in the northwest section of the city have been redone, he said. In the southwestern part of the city, it’s two-and-a-half out of 10.

“Most of town has pretty much been renovated now, but there are still a few blocks, even close to the ocean, that are not all spic and span,” Kesling said.

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What Makes It Unique

“Asbury Park is like an urban beach town that’s open all year-round,” Scheeler said. 

In recent years, the downtown area of the city, especially along Cookman Avenue, has become a lively mix of restaurants and bars, boutique shops and art galleries.

“You have the beach and the Atlantic Ocean but additionally you have a really great downtown,” Kesling said. “We have probably one of the top 10-rated downtowns in the state of New Jersey.”

Asbury Park is justly famous for its long boardwalk, an old-fashioned wooden structure that’s open year-round and offers plenty of restaurants and shops, he said.

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The main portion of the boardwalk is bounded by the 1920s Convention Hall and Paramount Theatre complex at the north end and the Casino Arena and Carousel House to the south. Both were designed by Warren Whitney, a Beaux-Arts architect from New York.

The boardwalk extends for miles down the shore, into other neighboring communities, like Bradley and Ocean Grove, Kesling said. “Within 10 minutes, you can see a variety of other nearby towns. It’s our Barcelona. It’s just lively, very culturally diverse and very colorful.” 

You won’t find much in the way of corporate chain restaurants and coffee houses in Asbury Park, Kesling said. “The town wants individually owned stores.”

Luxury Amenities

The Asbury Ocean Club offers 130 luxury condos and 54 boutique hotel rooms in a new 17-story building rising above the surf. Other boutique hotels include the Asbury Hotel, the Berkeley Hotel and the Empress Hotel, which has a popular pool that’s open all week.

Asbury Park offers plenty of classic Jersey Shore-style arts and entertainment, including the Asbury Splash Park and the Silverball Arcade Museum, which has hundreds of vintage pinball machines. The vintage Asbury Lanes bowling alley has been reborn with a new concert stage and a diner.

Since it first opened its doors in 1974, the legendary Stone Pony music club has been a centerpiece of the vibrant Asbury music scene, stoking the careers of Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Southside Johnny and Steve Van Zandt.

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Every September, Asbury Park hosts the immersive Sea.Hear.Now festival of surfing, music and art on the beach and boardwalk. Another popular event is the annual Asbury Park Zombie Walk along the boardwalk in October.

For restaurants, Scheeler likes Porta for pasta and pizza, the Japanese-inspired Taka and Dolce Fantasia. 

Many of the restaurants in town are what he calls “upscale casual—you can go there after the beach or out for dinner.”

 Who Lives There

As of the 2020 census, the city’s population was 15,188.

“A good diversity of people come to visit and live here,” Scheeler said.

“We’re a city,” he said. “We have all different income levels here, which is one of the great things about living here. There is a great mix of people here, and that makes us different from some other Jersey Shore towns.”

Asbury Park also “has always had a thriving gay scene,” Kesling said. Even in the 1970s, the city had a number of gay bars and clubs.

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Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s LGBTQ+ rights organization, is headquartered on Main Street, and every June the city hosts a gay pride parade and celebration, the state’s largest. The city’s strong gay community “was a piece of it for us,” in deciding to move to Asbury full time, Scheeler said. 

“Our feeder markets are primarily North Jersey and New York City,” he said. “They may have a large home in North Jersey and want a condo close to the beach, or it may be the other way around.”

“We also have people here who are snowbirds and go south for the winter,” he said.

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Notable Residents

Famous residents have included actors Danny DeVito and Vic Morrow, talk show host Wendy Williams, Bud Abbott of the Abbott and Costello comedy team, author Stephen Crane (“Red Badge of Courage”), and longtime Vogue editor-in-chief Edna Woolman Chase, according to published reports.

Outlook

“The real estate market is very strong, and there is very little inventory,” Kesling said. 

“Asbury Park has become more and more year-round and more and more exclusive,” he said. “People are spending $500,000 to $1 million to restore houses. Asbury is now on par with Ocean Grove and Bradley Beach.”

The Covid-19 pandemic made Asbury Park more desirable, Kesling said. People can telecommute and “maybe go into the city one or two days a week.”

Scheeler agreed. “There is still tremendous value here for real estate and tremendous opportunities to own houses,” he said.

Unlike other nearby Jersey Shore towns like Belmar, where people may have a history of going there with their family or friends from college, “people are still discovering Asbury Park,” he said. “I don’t think everyone knows about us yet.” 

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