New Jersey’s suburban gold rush has no ceiling in sight, and buyers are paying whatever it takes.

Forty-two Euclid Ave in Maplewood hit the market at $1,795,000. It sold for $2,279,000, a staggering 27% above ask. Down the road in South Orange, 376 Melrose Pl listed for $998,999 and closed at $1,332,200, a 33% premium. 

These aren’t outliers. They’re the new normal across a stretch of Essex and Union County suburbs where inventory has all but evaporated and buyers are throwing caution, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the wind.

Maplewood, South Orange and Montclair are leading the charge, with homes across the region averaging double digit percentages over asking price and spending under two weeks on the market before going under contract.

The numbers, according to weekly market data compiled by Mark Slade of Keller Williams Midtown Direct Realty, tell the story clearly. 

Maplewood’s average sale price sits at $1.34 million as of late June, with buyers paying 15.6% over ask. South Orange isn’t far behind at 16.2% over asking with an average sale price topping $1.27 million. Montclair, meanwhile, is running the hottest of the bunch, with buyers paying nearly 25% over list.

Slade, who has tracked these markets since becoming a realtor in 2009, says the upward march has been remarkably steady. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a down-trending year in Maplewood, South Orange or Montclair,” he told The Post, adding that the last several years in particular have brought “dramatic changes in the performance of the market.”

The pandemic supercharged an existing trend, according to Slade, who traces the appeal of these towns back to 1997, two years after Midtown Direct train service began running straight into Penn Station without a transfer in Hoboken. 

“That’s when we started to see some movement, some significant movement and attraction to the area,” he said.

Slade has a name for what’s happening now. He calls it “value convergence equilibrium” —  a theory built on the idea that Northern New Jersey buyers are catching up to what Westchester and Long Island commuters have paid for decades. 

“What we now see is that more and more people as buyers, are recognizing that with their economics, they can afford more house for less money in Northern New Jersey,” he said.

The buyers driving this frenzy aren’t only fleeing Manhattan. Slade says most are also coming from Brooklyn, Hoboken and Queens, current apartment dwellers looking to trade up. 

“Northern New Jersey offers some of the best values as much as it may seem crazy for someone like me watching these prices grow by leaps and bounds,” he said. “It’s still a better value if you’re looking for a 45 minute and under commute to the city.”

Basic economics explains the rest. Supply simply hasn’t kept pace. Slade points to Maplewood specifically, a town of 25,000 residents with more than 5,500 single family homes, yet only a couple dozen actively listed at any given time. 

“I mean, that’s just ridiculous,” he said. He tracks a metric he calls a “hypermarket,” where the number of homes under contract nearly doubles the number of active listings, a ratio he considers more telling than the traditional six month absorption rate used across the industry.

The demand has changed the character of these towns, longtime residents complain. 

Slade says he’s heard grumbling that the small town feel is being “supplanted by more New York, impatient, higher end buyers.” 

He offered an only half joking anecdote about downtown Maplewood’s diagonal parking spots, where illegal U-turns into spaces happen constantly despite signage every 30 feet. 

“I think that today’s buyers are much more affluent,” he said. “They’re even more time pressed, so to speak, which is why they’re choosing these areas to live for the more manageable commutes.”

Township meetings haven’t been immune to the anxiety. After a record breaking sale in Maplewood’s Hilton neighborhood last year, Slade recalls committee members raising concerns at the next public meeting about what runaway prices mean for longtime residents. Still, he sees the appreciation as a feature, not a bug, of homeownership.

“This is real estate,” he said. “This is what real estate is all about.”

Momentum tends to soften slightly as the year goes on, Slade says, a seasonal pattern he attributes half jokingly to what he calls “bonus baby syndrome,” when buyers flush with year end bonuses resolve to finally buy a house “so we don’t have to trip over the stroller.”

When buyers get priced out of one town, they simply move to the next rung down. 

Montclair shoppers frustrated by bidding wars often land in Maplewood. Maplewood buyers priced out end up in West Orange, where the year to date average sits at $763,000 with a 10.7% premium over ask, or Union, averaging around $600,000.

Bidding wars, meanwhile, have become simply expected. 

“Bidding wars are very much part of the current market scenario, given the limited number of homes for sale and the fact that the amount of buyers far outweighs the supply,” Slade said. 

“Buyer’s should generally expect some type of bidding war.” 

He uses an ice cream metaphor to describe buyer psychology, borrowed from a Cold Stone Creamery portion chart. 

“There are three sizes of ice cream at Cold Stone Creamary, Like It, Love it and Gotta Have It!,” he said. “So, if a buyer is in the Gotta Have It mode, their offer could likely blow everyone else away.”

Homes that have recently traded well above ask include 8 Colony Dr in West Orange, which sold for $1,178,000 against an $865,000 list, a 36% jump, and 35 Porter Pl in Montclair, which closed at $1,525,000 on a $1,395,000 ask, pricing out at 30% higher per square foot than the town average.

Whether this run has a natural endpoint is another matter. Slade doesn’t see one coming, short of the state “building a wall around Manhattan.”

New Jersey remains the most densely populated state in the country, meaning new construction is largely limited to developers subdividing larger lots rather than building fresh inventory from scratch. 

Relief in the form of significantly lower mortgage rates also seems unlikely anytime soon, Slade says, leaving buyers to keep competing for a shrinking pool of homes in towns that offer what he still considers, even amid the chaos, the better deal.

HERSHEY, Pa. (AP) — Hershey may be known as the “Sweetest Place on Earth,” thanks to its chocolate-drenched origins, but the Pennsylvania community is also home to Christian Pulisic — the most accomplished and famous player on a U.S. national team that’s dreaming big as it co-hosts the World Cup.

“Hershey to me is everything — it’s where my family is from, it’s where I grew up,” Pulisic recently said on his Instagram account as he promoted limited-edition Pulisic’s Milk Chocolate Bars by the Hershey Company that feature custom wrappers with his signature. “It’s where I learned how to play. It’s just home.”

Pulisic grew up in this south-central Pennsylvania community surrounded by farms and rolling countryside, where even the streetlights along Chocolate Avenue are shaped like Hershey’s Kisses. The community was founded in 1903 by Milton S. Hershey, the American businessman and philanthropist who also built homes for workers, a hotel and a theme park that Pulisic often visited with family.

More than 120 years later, the Hershey Company is still the economic engine of Chocolatetown, USA. But the “Man Behind the Chocolate Bar” now shares the hometown hero honor with the soccer player nicknamed “Captain America.”

Pulisic inspires young soccer players in Hershey

Pulisic’s hometown roots run deep, and during the World Cup, his community has rallied around him as the U.S. plays some of its most exciting soccer ever.

“It’s pretty amazing that he came from Hershey and played for my club,” said Hershey High School rising freshman Cecelia Stefanelli who, on a recent afternoon, kicked a ball to score a goal on her father at a field where Pulisic played.

The Americans will attempt to win their first World Cup elimination game in 24 years on Wednesday evening, when they face Bosnia-Herzegovina in the round of 32 in Santa Clara, California. They should have a healthy Pulisic after the star missed the second group-stage game with a calf injury and played only 33 minutes as a sub in the final group match against Turkey.

“I’d love if USA won the World Cup; it’d make me happy,” said Stefanelli, a center back who also plays for the Pennsylvania Classics soccer club. Pulisic often credits the structure and coaches at PA Classics, where he played for eight years, with helping develop his skills. In 2021, he returned to the club for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for new fields that he financed and helped design. It’s now known as the Pulisic Stomping Grounds.

The club is located in Lancaster County, surrounded by chicken and dairy farms that give off a pungent odor of fermenting feed and manure.

On a recent day, Liam Gustafson and Moussa Oumarou juggled a soccer ball and passed it back and forth as they warmed up for training in front of a huge collage of photos of Pulisic that trace from his childhood training to starring for the U.S. at the World Cup.

“It’s really special to see someone from around here, where we live, playing in the World Cup,” said Gustafson, a 17-year-old forward who dreams of playing pro soccer and calls Pulisic his role model. “It’s really inspiring to see someone who paved the way, so that we can do that someday.”

Pulisic’s path to USMNT stardom ran through Hershey

The road to soccer was paved early as Pulisic followed in the footsteps of his parents. He was born in Hershey on Sept. 18, 1998, to Kelley and Mark Pulisic, both former collegiate soccer players at George Mason University. His father went on to play pro indoor soccer for the Harrisburg Heat. The family moved to England for a year while Pulisic’s mother completed a Fulbright Program teacher exchange and their 7-year-old rising star played for the Brackley Town youth team.

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“Mark and Kelley could write a playbook on how to raise a humble, smart, kind superstar, while maintaining family relationships,” said Tara Seymour, a family friend and retired health and physical education teacher at Hershey Middle School. She met the family at a soccer camp and became close friends with Pulisic’s mother.

“She just quietly said to me one time, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’ This is a kid who could juggle the soccer ball hundreds of times when he was in elementary school,” Seymour said. Pulisic, she said, would practice in his backyard for hours, trying to emulate the moves of pros he saw on TV.

“He has an intensity that couldn’t be taught,” she recalled. “I think he had the opportunity to go pro earlier or go to Europe earlier and they held back just to make sure emotionally and maturity-wise he was ready.”

When the family returned to Hershey, Pulisic joined PA Classics at the age of 10. The club’s president and co-founder Doug Harris said Pulisic’s talent allowed him to play with older age groups, and he was often the smallest player on the field.

“I think if you were to pull kids in the world who want to achieve the level of Christian Pulisic, you’d have millions that would step up, raise their hand. They’re all gifted; they all can play,” Harris said. “But there’s something fundamental about what Christian has been able to do and I’d credit Mark and Kelley Pulisic with a lot of that.”

Looking forward to the future of American soccer

The Americans’ only World Cup knockout win came on June 17, 2002, when they defeated Mexico 2-0 in the round of 16 in South Korea. Pulisic has said the team’s approach won’t change in this round and the mood remains light despite the high stakes.

“It’s just special to be here,” he said. “You just don’t want it to end.”

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Ahead of the game against Bosnia-Herzegovina, PA Classics coaches Brittney Jakobson and Nick Jakobson took their children, Declan and Camden, to kick a ball at Pulisic’s former club. The Americans, they said, have a shot at winning the tournament. But their legacy goes beyond the trophy.

“Their goal is to inspire a generation and it’s really fun to see that happening in real time … to hear people going out and watching the games, to see people buying the jerseys,” Brittney Jakobson said.

“Pulisic, obviously, in the short term is a great kind of figure to follow,” said Nick Jakobson. “But he does very much encourage that it’s not just about him. It’s not about just these four years. It’s about the next eight, 12, 16. It’s forward-thinking, and they’re laying a good foundation for what we can build on.”

___

See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

Knowing the history of successful Real Housewives shows, one could have assumed that Liz McGraw’s life was going to play out on TV for the next 20 years, à la Lisa Vanderpump or Vicki Gunvalson. This is, however, not the case. McGraw, one of the breakout stars of season one of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, is leaving after just one season, she revealed on Instagram today. “I’m full of gratitude for the amazing opportunity to appear on this show,” she wrote. “As filming for Season 2 begins, I have made the decision to take a step back and focus on my family, my work and my passions. The RHORI cast is an amazing group of women who have created something special. I’ll be watching next season, rooting for the continued success of this franchise. For now, I look forward to enjoying this little corner of the world from the other side of the camera.”

The so-called Weed Queen of Rhode Island was part of the glue that held the women of RHORI together. She knew the most cast members and would often counsel both sides of a fight. Throughout the season, she got into arguments with friends, including Kelsey Swanson, Jo-Ellen Tiberi, and Alicia Carmody. There is no confirmation as to why McGraw is leaving, but we know it was her choice. Real Housewives producer Andy Cohen commented, “The door is always open … Just sayin’!” on her going-away post. In the meantime, Jo-Ellen, you have even more show to carry.