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Real Estate
in Marlboro New Jersey
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Bubbling over
The downturn in the housing market ripples through the Shore's economy.
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on
08/19/07
BY MICHAEL L. DIAMOND
BUSINESS WRITER
The owners of Boyc Supply Inc., a
10-year-old plumbing supplier in Stafford,
no doubt knew the housing market's expansion wouldn't last forever, but
that hasn't made it less painful now that the bad times have hit.
To survive, the company's owners laid off two employees,
reduced their hours on Saturdays and scaled back their inventory, all while
waiting for the real estate market to show signs of life.
"I'm definitely concerned, but we've been here 10 years,
so you've got to take the bad times with the good times," co-owner
Scott Maloney said.
Boyc Supply is one of dozens of businesses at the Shore caught
in the downturn of the once-hot housing market. They include retailers,
banks and interior decorators, and all are taking steps to survive what, at
best, can be considered a rough patch.
Their plight demonstrates the wide reach of New Jersey's residential real estate
market and serves as a reminder that good economic times don't last.
"You can't sit back and think you're the best and
everything is going to come to you," said Richard Hopkins, owner of
Freehold Movers, a moving company based in Manalapan. "It's good when
there's a little bit of slowdown. It awakens you."
Hopkins said Freehold
Movers' business has declined about 10 percent from two years ago, and its
workforce has fallen from 25 to 20. But he thinks the company can maintain
that employment level since it didn't go on a hiring spree when times were
good.
Companies tied to the housing market could be forgiven for not
being as optimistic; the housing market is in a slump.
The National Association of Realtors last week reported the
median price for an existing single-family home in the region that includes
Monmouth and Ocean counties was virtually flat from the same time last
year.
And the home construction industry is getting hit hard. The
number of permits for the first six months of the year in Monmouth and
Ocean counties is down about 25 percent from the first six months of last
year, according to the New Jersey Builders Association.
By itself, that wouldn't be a concern. Residential
construction, for example, represents less than 2 percent of all jobs in New Jersey, according to a 2003 report by the
National Association of Home Builders, a Washington, D.C.,
trade group.
But housing ripples throughout the economy. New home owners
pay lawyers, insurance agents and utility companies. They hire interior
decorators. They buy furniture. The builders' association in 2005 found a
typical 100-home development in the United States generated $16
million in local income and created 284 jobs.
The economy also is affected when home sales decline, said
Joel Naroff, an economist with Cherry Hill-based Commerce Bancorp.
"You look (at the home you bought), and it's the ugliest
wallpaper you've seen in your life," Naroff said. "A lot of
people within a year start to upgrade and change around houses that they
bought . . . It's not as extensive (as a newly built home), but you do have
changes that affect local suppliers."
The impact can be seen nationwide. Home Depot Inc., the giant
home improvement chain, last week reported that its second quarter profit
fell 14.8 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Its stock last week was
down 17 percent for the year and at a 52-week low.
And retailer Sears Holdings Corp. last week reported that
second-quarter sales were down 3.8 percent at its Kmart stores and 4.3
percent at its Sears stores compared with the same quarter a year ago. Its
stock is down 22 percent this year.
"While we recognize the housing market slowdown and other
economic pressures have presented a noticeable headwind to the business, we
are disappointed with our second-quarter results," Aylwin Lewis, chief
executive officer, said.
The impact of the sluggish housing market at the Shore is
harder to gauge. But business owners, who two years ago were awash in
customers, are bracing for tough times.
They include:
Banks. Middletown-based Two River Community Bank didn't make
subprime loans — mortgages to home buyers with poor credit histories
— but it shifted gears nonetheless.
The demand for construction loans slowed dramatically, said
Barry B. Davall, president and chief executive officer of Community
Partners Bancorp, the holding company for Two River Bank.
So it decreased the amount it pays customers for deposits. And
it tried to expand other product lines such as loans to medical groups for
equipment, offices and malpractice insurance, he said.
"A year ago we were struggling to find deposits. Now it's
loans," Davall said. "Does this mean it's bad for the bank? Not
necessarily. It's just a cycle we're going through."
Painters. Todd Drucquer, who has owned Coastal Painting Co. of
Bay Head for 15 years, said bookings for the fall are lower than the past
two years.
The trend prompted him to consider going to Florida for the winter to take advantage
of the warm weather. That way, he can paint the outside of a home as well
as the inside.
"It's a roller coaster," Drucquer said. "Being
in business for yourself, being a small contractor, it's a roller
coaster."
Interior decorators. Sally Bacarella, owner of Bacarella
Interiors in Ocean
Township, said
business didn't completely dry up. Many of her customers decided to stay
put and redecorate rather than put their home on the market.
For Bacarella, redoing a few rooms is not as lucrative as decorating
an entire home, but it adds up. This year is more profitable than last
year, she said.
She has found just one caveat among her customers:
"They're definitely looking at the bottom line," Bacarella said.
"They're spending money, but it's not the sky is the limit."
Movers. Ideal Way Movers Inc. in Lakewood saw business decline by as much
as 30 percent, and it laid off about five employees, or 20 percent of its
workforce, owner Baker McColley said.
The company keeps its expenses low. For example, it owns its
building, McColley said. But to stay afloat, it cut back on advertising and
began bidding on government work.
"I'm worried about it, but we've been around 66 years, so
we've been through the tough times," McColley said. "We've
weathered a lot of tough storms over the past 66 years. We all hope it's
going to change. If you don't buy a home, you don't need me."
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Property taxes
spur revolts in several states
John F. Wasik
Posted by the Asbury Park Press
When it comes to property taxes in the U.S.,
often you are blessed and cursed.
In a rising market, the local assessor will raise his estimate
of your home's worth, which usually results in a higher real-estate tax
bill. Your property taxes, particularly in a high- growth area, then pay
for new schools, fire and police stations and other public services.
Yet the price of growth can be burdensome when property taxes
outpace the rate of consumer inflation or income growth. Anyone who lives
in New Jersey, Florida, Illinois — or any area where real-estate
values have jumped dramatically — can attest to this often negative
reality of homeownership.
Tax revolts from North Dakota
to Florida
have proven one thing: If you lower the local tax bill, you still need
revenue from other sources. You end up swapping one levy for another.
Nowhere has the burden incensed more taxpayers than in New Jersey. The
state has the dubious honor of having the highest property-tax bills in the
country, averaging $6,300 last year, a 7-percent increase over 2005.
New Jersey revolt
After years of citizen activism in New Jersey, a recent proposal called for
a 20-percent reduction in property taxes in exchange for higher state sales
taxes, estimated to cost the average household an additional $275 a year,
according to Citizens for Property Tax Reform, a state taxpayers group.
"This is neither relief nor reform," says Cy
Thannikary, chairman of the Allentown, New Jersey-based group, which claims
to represent 500,000 homeowners and 57 community organizations. "The
reduction is not constitutionally guaranteed." The Garden State
collected almost $21 billion in property taxes last year where local levies
are twice the national average.
Homeowners just can't keep up with property-tax increases in
many states. From 2000 to 2004, personal income grew almost 16 percent
while property-tax collections increased about 28 percent, according to the
Tax Foundation, a Washington-based educational organization.
That's why tax revolts have spread across the country and are
gaining momentum.
Stymied by stubborn bureaucracies, many of these insurrections
have stalled. Once taxing bodies set funding levels, it's extremely
difficult to get them to cut back. Public-employee pensions are guaranteed
by law, fire engines need to be replaced and libraries need to buy books.
When property taxes are flowing in during robust real-estate markets,
politicians spend heartily instead of giving taxpayers a break.
Prosperity boosts coffers
Why are some areas taxed higher than others? Growth is a big
reason. Where infrastructure is needed, the disproportionate burden falls
on homeowners in most places.
Each taxing jurisdiction — more than 54,000 of them in
the U.S.
— accounts for portions of your property-tax bill.
Taxing bodies raise or lower their levies for various reasons.
Sometimes they need the money to expand or build new structures. Local
governmental bodies account for the largest portion of real-estate taxation
— 73 percent — according to the Tax Foundation. About half of
all taxes go to local schools.
New Jersey is again a case in
point, ranking as the state with the highest per-capita property-tax rate,
according to 2004 Census Bureau data. That translated into more than $2,000
per person on average, or more than 5.2 percent as a percentage of income.
Pennsylvanians taxed less
In comparison, neighbors in Pennsylvania, which ranked in the middle
of the pack of the Census Bureau survey, the per-person average was about
$1,000, or 3.1 percent of income.
Five of the counties with the highest local taxes relative to
median home values are in upstate New York:
Niagara, Monroe, Onondaga, Wayne and Chautauqua. That's based on the
2005 Census Bureau data.
While it's politically expedient to advocate tax reform, it's
very difficult to get it done.
Does the "rob Peter to pay Paul" method of shifting
tax burdens work? Often politicians seek to ease the pain of tax increases
by shifting gambling revenue to schools. Several states are considering
higher income taxes and sales levies.
You have some recourse in this struggle. You can ask local
taxing bodies to account for and trim their spending and to eliminate
waste. School board members as well as village and county government
officials are all elected. In New
Jersey, taxpayers can vote on school budgets.
At the assessment level, you have a right to appeal your
market value and property description.
Fight injustice
In Illinois,
my neighbors and I have organized to examine local assessment practices to see
if they are unfair.
It may take years to obtain relief. Yet as the 18th-century
revolutionary Thomas Paine once said: "It is time to dismiss that
inattention which has so long been the encouraging cause of stretching
taxation to excess."
NJ Homes for Sale
N.J.'s economic strength obscured by rankings
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Sunday,
April 22, 2007
By JAMES W. HUGHES and JOSEPH J. SENECA
SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
from NorthJersey.com
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Let's start with the
less-than-good news.
The current economic expansion in New Jersey has been extraordinarily
slow. During the preceding two expansions -- 1982 to 1989 and 1992 to 2000
-- employment growth averaged 77,000 jobs per year. However, for the past
three years -- 2004 through 2006 -- New
Jersey has gained, on average, only 33,000 jobs
per year. And this total was bolstered by exceptionally large job growth in
the public sector.
In 2006, the state
ranked 43rd among the 50 states in the rate of private-sector job growth.
So improving employment growth, particularly in high-paying knowledge-based
jobs, is certainly a top priority for New Jersey's economic-development
policy.
Nonetheless, New
Jersey still has a powerful, knowledge-based core
economy. This is the result of a remarkable transformation that took place
during the final two decades of the 20th century. The New Jersey economy was completely
reinvented from a fading former manufacturing dynamo to a leading-edge,
information-age economy.
Unfortunately, this reality is often obscured when U.S. Census
Bureau metropolitan areas are used for national assessments and rankings. New Jersey has
highly fragmented metropolitan area delineations compared with other
states, and this hurts the state's visibility and marketability. For
example, Bergen, Hudson
and Passaic counties are part of the New
York-Wayne-White Plains, NY-NJ Metropolitan Division, while Essex,
Hunterdon, Morris, Sussex and Union counties are
in the Newark-Union, NJ-PA Metropolitan Division.
In 2001, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) busily
engaged in their periodic post-census realignment of metropolitan areas.
They proposed that half of New
Jersey be placed in a broadly defined New York
Metropolitan Statistical Area, and that the other half be placed in a
broadly defined Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Thus, New Jersey
would have completely disappeared as an economic entity in any metropolitan
rankings. So we immediately made a counter-proposal: Merge the proposed New York and Philadelphia
delineations and designate the result as "The Greater New Jersey
Metropolitan Statistical Area." Our suggestion didn't work, but OMB's
original proposal also never saw the light of day. Nonetheless, economic
and demographic data for New
Jersey remain obscure in metropolitan rankings
because the state is fragmented into multiple metropolitan divisions.
However, the 11-county northern and central New Jersey market
area -- comprising Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex,
Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset and Union counties -- is often used by
the major real estate brokerage firms to define the northern and central
New Jersey office market. If this 11-county market area were designated an
official Census Bureau metropolitan area, it would rank fourth among all
metropolitan statistical areas in the country in total population, with
more than 6 million residents. It would rank fifth in total employment,
with nearly 3.6 million jobs, and fourth in total personal income, at just
above $270 million. Also, the 11-county area has more than 209 million
square feet of commercial office space, ranking fifth among all
metropolitan areas.
Thus, the market area is one of the nation's most potent
business nodes, with more economic clout than such "official"
metropolitan areas as Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston,
Atlanta, Miami,
Boston and Atlanta. Only the sprawling New York, Los Angeles,
and Chicago
metropolitan statistical areas are larger.
These high-ranking economic and demographic rankings are also
paralleled by measures of the region's job quality. The region has a much
higher percentage of its employment in knowledge-based jobs than the nation
as a whole. The 11-county area accounts for 2.1 percent of total national
employment. That would be its expected share in any employment sub-sector.
However, the area accounts for 2.7 percent of the nation's information jobs
(which includes telecommunications, the Internet and publishing); 2.6
percent of the nation's finance, insurance and real estate jobs; and 2.7
percent of nation's professional, technical, management and
administrative-service jobs. Thus, the knowledge-based, information-age
sectors of the economy are significantly over-represented in the 11-county
area, which stands at the leading edge of the nation in terms of employment
concentrations in the industries of the future.
Nationally leading levels of economic activity co-exist in New Jersey with
nationally lagging employment growth. New Jersey's core economic power should
be a major attraction for business investment and development. It
represents a firm and potent foundation upon which to build state and local
economic-development policies, to enhance the business climate and to
maintain New Jersey's
standard of living and quality of life.
James W. Hughes is dean and Joseph J. Seneca is university
professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
at Rutgers University.
NJ Homes for Sale
This is from a recent
article from Courier Post Online
For sale: 1
N.J. military base
ON THE WEB
Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Planning Authority: http://nj.gov/fmerpa/
Fort Monmouth information: http://www.monmouth.army.mil/C4ISR/faqs.htmbrac5
Wednesday, January
10, 2007
By JEFFREY GOLD
AP Business Writer
FORT MONMOUTH (AP) - For sale:
1,100 acres with office buildings, town homes, 20-lane bowling alley and
18-hole golf course. Fitness center with indoor pool, strip mall and
600-seat chapel also available to the right bidders.
Not interested? Perhaps, high-tech laboratories, a day care
center and a 74-slip marina by the Shrewsbury
River could tempt a buyer as the
Army looks to sell its property at Fort Monmouth.
Forced to leave by 2011 as part of the Pentagon's base-closing plan, the
military is casting its net to draw developers to the property. Much of it
must be sold at full-market value, but it can be divided into different
parcels. Local governments and nonprofit groups can apply for land and
structures at reduced prices.
The fort has several hundred apartments, which might appeal to neighboring
towns looking for affordable housing, said Col. Ricki L. Sullivan, the
garrison commander.
"You have to think, what are the needs of the community,"
Sullivan said Wednesday, as he escorted a group of reporters on a tour of
the base.
The tour was the first of about eight scheduled by the Fort Monmouth
Economic Revitalization Planning Authority, created by the state in April
to oversee redevelopment of the base. Other tours will be for developers,
social service groups and colleges.
The fort lies along one of the Jersey
Shore's commercial
corridors, Route 35, where some real estate is estimated to be worth $1
million an acre. Three towns have territory within base boundaries --
Eatontown, Oceanport and Tinton
Falls -- and several
of their neighborhoods abut Army fences.
Besides the land, the state is also worried about restoring the jobs and
revenue created by the fort, whose 5,500-person payroll approaches $500
million. Its overall economic impact is estimated at $2.5 billion annually
by the state Commerce, Economic Growth & Tourism Commission. That
includes money spent locally by workers and support jobs that involve about
22,000 people.
Although the Army's departure is years away, deadlines for the
redevelopment effort are already approaching. Entities looking for free or
reduced price facilities for public benefit must obtain sponsorship by a
federal agency and submit a notice of interest by March 8, said Frank
Cosentino, the revitalization authority's executive director.
So far, only one building and 8 acres around it have been claimed by a U.S.
agency, which had first chance at facilities, Sullivan said. Russell Hall
will be used as offices by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he
said.
However, the golf course, as well as a new firing range and an extensive
firefighter training center, are being eyed by Monmouth County.
Eatontown is considering a fort building to replace its cramped municipal
building.
Sullivan said the several hundred base structures have about 5 million
square feet of space. That includes the imposing Meyer Center,
with 665,000 square feet of office space by the Garden State Parkway.
"This is really a hub for the Army's electronic communications ...
going from concept to delivery to soldiers," fort spokesman Timothy
Rider said.
Several buildings are kept at a constant 72 degrees by a geothermal
heating-cooling system using water pumps.
The McAfee Center has a soundproof chamber that
can fit a Blackhawk helicopter to test new gear devised by the Intelligence
and Information Warfare Directorate.
Also on base are banquet facilities, gas stations, ballfields, a movie
theater and the U.S. Military Academy Prep School, which will be relocating
to the academy at West Point,
N.Y.
The base also boasts the Patterson Army Health Clinic, a Veterans Administration
clinic that had been a 100-bed hospital when Fort Monmouth
had 10,000 active duty military personnel, Sullivan said.
The fort now has about 5,000 civilian employees and 500 military personnel.
Most are being offered a chance to transfer to the bases where the fort's
work will be shifted, the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland
and Fort Belvoir
in Virginia.
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Tip #23
Home Buying Tip, Big Ticket Items:
Before you buy a home you should avoid
buying any big ticket items. When
this is found out during the credit process or reporting it can make
mortgage banks nervous.
Even if you will be able to get a loan, you might not be
able to get the best available interest rate.
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Tip #24
Home Selling Tip, Listing Right:
A common mistake when people list their house (especially in a
buyers’ market) is list the house at a high price that they
don’t anticipate to sell it at.
They figure that if they get it then GREAT but if not they can always
lower the price.
This is not a good practice because what
mostly happens is it will stay on the market for a while and make
potential home buyers nervous
because it’s been on the market so long.
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