The NY Post just wrote about your house.

You might have seen this one floating around... 

The New York Post ran a piece a couple months ago with a headline that stopped a lot of people mid-scroll: New Jersey just topped the nation in home price growth and it's not even close.

They weren't exaggerating. 

According to Cotality, a property data firm, home prices across New Jersey climbed nearly 6% in February compared to a year earlier, the sharpest gain of any state in the country. 

The national average over that same stretch? Half a percent. 

New Jersey didn't just beat the field. It lapped it. 

New Jersey was followed by North Dakota at 4.92% and Illinois. Meanwhile, 13 states recorded outright price declines. Florida dropped more than 2%, Washington D.C. slid 3%, Montana fell nearly as far. The places people were rushing to during COVID are now cooling off while we're heating up.

The reason isn't random. 

New Jersey's boom is being driven by workers getting priced out of New York City who still need transit access and aren't willing to sacrifice their full paycheck to get it, many of them in finance, pharma, and biotech. But the data only tells part of the story. 

Anyone who actually lives here already knows the rest of it....

You're 20 minutes from one of the greatest cities in the world and you still have a driveway. You have actual seasons, real falls with leaves, real winters with snow days, real summers that end at the shore. You have diners that have been open since 1987 that still know your order. You have farmers markets on Saturday mornings, Little League fields on Sunday afternoons, and neighborhoods where people still wave at each other. 

The school systems across Bergen, Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties consistently rank among the best in the entire country, not just the state. And the food. You already know. There is no equivalent anywhere else on earth to what we have access to here, from the Italian delis to the Portuguese bakeries to the best pizza per square mile and bagels that you cannot replicate outside of this state. 

People from other states visit and don't understand why we complain. People who leave almost always miss it.

What makes this structural and not just sentimental is that North Jersey's strict zoning and limited available land make meaningful new supply nearly impossible to build. 

Demand keeps coming. The inventory doesn't budge. Among the 100 largest metro areas in the country, Newark recorded the steepest year-over-year price jump a 6.7% gain, which is WILD. 

Of 546 NJ zip codes analyzed by Zillow, more than 92% saw home values rise. This isn't one hot pocket of the state. It's basically everywhere. 

Which brings up the simplest question: Do you actually know what your home is worth right now? 

Not the Zillow-estimate, a real number based on what's actually selling near you. That's the starting point for every smart decision that comes after it, whether you're staying forever or just starting to wonder.

I run free home evaluations, no strings attached.

Reply here or reach me at (973) 901-4670.