MAPLEWOOD
“GET ready for the block party! Great neighborhood!” That is how an agent named Heather Gilheany verbally baits the hook in her listing for 156 Oakland Road, a three-bedroom one-bath colonial built in 1925.
“Selling the neighborhood,” explained Ms. Gilheany of Coldwell Banker. “That is what we always do — sell not just the house, but the neighborhood.”
But it so happens that on this particular block of Oakland Road, and in the immediately surrounding three or four blocks, for-sale signs abound. While the agents are busy “selling the neighborhood,” someone just driving by might be forgiven for wondering whether the entire neighborhood was for sale — lock, stock and barrel.
Last week there was a for-sale sign in front of No. 157, and one at No. 160 on the opposite side of the street.
There was another at 66 Burnett Terrace around the corner, two on the same block of nearby Highland Avenue, two on contiguous blocks of Plymouth Avenue, and so on. In all, there were a dozen signs within a roughly four-block area, although in some cases, houses were already under contract and the signs were being kept up during the attorney-review process.
This neighborhood of 75 to 80 houses is sometimes called the Tuscan section of town, after the local Tuscan Elementary School. The houses were mostly built in the 1920s and 1930s. The price range on those for sale was $425,000 to $599,000, except for one, a larger house at 104 Plymouth Avenue, which was recently listed for $674,900.
In Maplewood over all, there are 126 active listings, out of 5,541 owner-occupied homes, according to Patricia Ross, a Coldwell Banker agent, who says she has lived in town all her life and sold real estate there since 1984. She found the number high but not unusually so. And she noted that many residents moved from one house to another within Maplewood over the course of their lives.
Ms. Ross has a listing for a three-bedroom one-bath Tudor at 93 Midland Avenue, two blocks from Oakland Road. It has been on the market for five months at an asking price of $459,000. She declined to discuss the situation of the sellers or to say whether she was contemplating a change in strategy as more houses are put on the market this spring. But several agents selling neighborhood houses, in some instances on behalf of heirs, said that they were pressing sellers to cut asking prices because of the growing inventory.
Robert Northfield, another Coldwell Banker agent, said it was “very important for the Realtor to take sellers around to see the competition, take them to open houses so they can understand how best to price theirs.”
Mr. Northfield, who has the listing for 104 Plymouth Avenue, said he thought the presence of two houses for sale side by side, or several on a block, could be a good thing in some ways. “It helps generate traffic,” he said. “The neighborhood sells itself, and each house has a unique character and will find its own buyer.”
He said 104 Plymouth would attract a “totally different” buyer than other houses in the neighborhood, but he would be happy to have other agents “piggyback” on the open houses he schedules there — because attracting home shoppers is positive however it occurs.
On Oakland Road, No. 160 — the largest of the three for sale, and at $549,900 the most expensive — was under contract a couple of days after the first open house on Feb. 28, said Jessica Keefe, the selling agent.
“There were five offers,” said Ms. Keefe of Coldwell Banker in Montclair, “four over asking price.”
The five-bedroom house last sold in 1998 for $200,000, according to Zillow.com. Ms. Keefe said the owners had put in a new kitchen and bath, and “made the product sparkle” before putting it on the market last month.
“Fresh towels in the baths, beautifully decorated family room and first floor, a pristine basement,” were all part of the packaging, she said.
“They had already bought another house in Glen Ridge,” Ms. Keefe said of the sellers, “which was also a multiple-bid situation. They looked very carefully at the multiple listings for homes in their neighborhood, and in setting the price, we thought about the best way to create a perception of value. That’s what it’s all about.”
There are, of course, larger market forces at work right now in all neighborhoods, no matter their size or status. Real estate specialists included the following:
¶Spring is traditionally the most popular time to show and sell a house, coinciding with better weather and the rhythms of the school year.
¶As the national recession eases, a “shadow inventory” is emerging: some homeowners who put off trying to sell are starting to try now.
¶The federal tax credit program for first-time buyers expires April 30, and many buyers are trying to beat the deadline.
Focusing more tightly, though, real estate agents in northern New Jersey said a concentration of for-sale signs was often the result of sociological change, rather than change of season or economy.
“I think what happens is a natural progression,” said Perri K. Feldman, an agent based in the Keller-Williams office in Summit. “People move into a neighborhood when their children are young, and then when everyone is older, and their children have stopped boomeranging back home, one decides to put their house on the market.
“Then, all the nosy neighbors come to the open house,” Ms. Feldman continued. “And they start to chat back and forth: ‘Oh, did you hear that the house on the next street over sold, and it went pretty fast? Oh, and this neighbor and that neighbor are putting their houses up, and the other one is thinking about it.’
“And pretty soon, they start calling me, because, well, they’ve been thinking — and it’s time.”
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