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What Is Going on with the Rental Market?
🎡 Ocean City, NJ's only weekly newsletter
Our newsletter schedule is changed around a bit due to the holiday next week.
Today we’ll feature official FOURTH OF JULY WEEK EVENTS in Ocean City and across the Jersey Shore (including bike parade and fireworks times), and an Ocean City real estate market update.
We’ll be back with our normal news-based format on Wednesday, July 3.
Table of Contents
📆 Upcoming Events in (and around) Ocean City
Friday, June 28
🎶 Somers Point Beach Concert (Somers Point) | The Dane Anthony Band | Details and times here
Saturday, June 29
Sunday, June 30
🍑 Stone Harbor Farmers Market (Stone Harbor) | Water Tower Lot | 8:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
🎻 Bernadette Peters Performing with the Ocean City POPS | Music Pier | Details here (SOLD OUT)
Monday, July 1
👩🎤 Killer Queen - A Tribute to Queen | Music Peter | Details and very limited tickets here
Tuesday, July 2
Wednesday, July 3
🍓 Farmers Market | Tabernacle Grounds | 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
🥧 Wacky Wednesday: Pie Eating Contest | Music Pier | 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Wacky Wednesday kicks off in Ocean City with the annual pie eating contest. Little Squirt will be there to defend his crown. Free to enter. Limited to 150 participants.
Little Squirt, dominating
🇺🇸 Thursday, July 4
🚴♂️ Bike Parades
Gardens: Longport Bridge to East Atlantic Blvd. 210 Gardens Parkway, Ocean City. Bike Parade Sponsored by the Gardens Civic Association. Registration 9 a.m. at the Longport Bridge parking lot. Parade begins at 10 a.m.
South End: Bike Parade Sponsored by the South OC Improvement Assoc, City of Ocean City and the Chamber of Commerce. Registration 9 a.m. at 40th & Asbury Ave. Parade begins at 10 a.m.
Riviera: Bike Parade Sponsored by the Riviera Neighborhood. Registration at 11 a.m. at the Rosemar Lane Park. Parade begins at Noon.
🏃♀️ Junior Olympics (Sea Isle) | Dealy Field (6108 Central Ave.) | Free for boys and girls ages 3 to 12, registration starts at 9:30 a.m., details here
🎻 Ocean City POPS Free Outdoor Concert | Carey Stadium (6th and the Boardwalk) | 8:00 p.m., more details here
🎶 Somers Points Beach Concert (Somers Point) | John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band | Details and times here
🪁 Kite Flying Competition | Beach next to Music Pier | 7:00 p.m.
🎆 Fireworks
Ocean City: 6th Street on the Beach, 9:00 p.m.
Margate: Huntington Avenue Beach, 9:00 p.m.
Sea Isle: 50th Street Beach, 9:15 p.m.
Avalon: 30th Street Beach, 8:55 p.m.
Wildwood: Boardwalk, 10:00 p.m.
Friday, July 5
Saturday, July 6
🔈 Concert Under the Stars: Jesse Garron - Elvis Tribute (Sea Isle) | Excursion Park | Details and times here
Sunday, July 7
🎶 Ocean City POPS Present Greatest Hits | Music Pier | 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. | Details and tickets here
You can see the full list of events in all nearby Shore towns with the following links: Ocean City | Sea Isle | Margate | Avalon | Stone Harbor | Somers Point | Wildwood | Cape May | Ventnor
Also note the Ocean City Library has many events for adults and kids alike on their calendar, which can be viewed here.
If you know of any additional events for Fourth of July weekend or have an event you’d like to include next week, email [email protected].
🏠 Real Estate Update
What’s Going on with the Rental Market?
I’ve heard plenty of stories from owners in Ocean City who have been unable to rent their properties as quickly as they have the past few years.
And unlike sales data (next section), rental data is less public, a bit more proprietary, and harder to come across.
So I asked Colin Halliday and Kevin Laskowski of the 17th Street Berger office. They’ve been at this for more than 30 years combined, and Berger is the leading rental agency on the island.
They say rentals are on pace with last year, and perhaps even up slightly.
What’s changed, however, is the number of units available.
“The rental market is good. We should hit the same amount of rentals in volume as last year which was another record year. The difference this year in my opinion is that more people have decided to rent their homes giving more inventory throwing off supply and demand a bit.”
Berger is on pace for about 14,000 rental contracts this year, which is roughly the same pace as last year and a pretty incredible number. But they still have weeks available for rent, which wasn’t the case at this point the last few years.
That’s because of the noticeable uptick in the number of rental units available.
“If you are within 2 weeks of preferred vacation week, owners are more likely to negotiate. So since more is available, negotiated or discounts are coming from owners.”
In short, same demand, more supply.
The post-Covid demand for Shore houses is well-documented. The economy skyrocketed, interest rates went down, inflation ripped (perhaps giving owners a skewed sense of their appreciation), and people reduced their plane travel.
As I’ve argued before, the Shore was, and is, the perfect beneficiary of a post-Covid world. More people work from home, or work a hybrid schedule, and the Shore, unlike pandemic boom towns in the midwest and west, is a short drive from one (or even 2 or 3) major cities, meaning residents and second home owners can easily spend all or most of their time at the beach but still get to an office if they need to.
Some of that is coming undone. The Shore’s position as a post-Covid beneficiary hasn’t changed, but interest rates are up, the economy is less certain, and people are flying more. A lot more.
And so perhaps you have some owners who want to travel and spend less time at the Shore, or need to rent their properties to offset costs. All the while rental demand has flattened (albeit at record high levels).
Anecdotally, Halliday said his small rental property was fetching $6,000 some weeks over the last few years. But he currently has one week remaining which he has dropped to $4,500.
“Owners have to be smart and read the market for 2025. The days of asking whatever you want may not be around anymore. You have to do your homework and work closely with an agent!”
May Market Report
With all of that context in mind, let’s take a look median sales prices and sales volume, the latter of which remains stubbornly low for May.
The median sale price in May came in at $904,375, which is down 8% YoY, and roughly on par with 2022.
Single-family home prices led the way with a 34% YoY increase at $2,170,000, but that was on extremely low sales volume of only 6 SF home sales in May (compared to 20 last year), 4 of which were for larger 5+ bedroom homes, skewing the median price.
Condo prices continue to be relatively flat over the last two years in May.
Median sales prices on condos were $867,500, which is up 2% YoY, but that doesn’t offset annual inflation, which was over 3% in May.
How can overall median sales price be down when SF and condo prices are up? Because so few single-family homes are selling compared to previous years, so "cheaper” condos make up a larger share of sales.
There remains historically low sales volume. And condo prices, which increasingly drive the overall market, are mostly flat.
So when will things change? I asked Halliday for his thoughts:
“So few people want to sell because they don’t want to leave OC and bought in with an average rate of 3.2%, and they don’t want to sell because if they buy something larger or downsize they’re looking at roughly a little over 7% on their rate. I think it’s going to take time for people to realize that 3% interest rate won’t be back any time soon, if ever… I’m guessing that once rates get into the 5’s we will see a lot of inventory hit the market.
And then it will be the classic battle of supply vs. demand. Will a flood of supply hit the market, putting downward pressure on prices? Or will a decrease in interest rates send a surge of demand to offset increased listings?
We will cover it all in our dedicated real estate newsletter, Shore Cribs. You can subscribe for free here:
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Thanks! Enjoy the weekend.
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