Last Sunday morning, I found myself on Midland Avenue in Montclair walking against a tide of hundreds of runners. This is not really unusual; Midland Avenue is a straight wide street that starts at Bloomfield Ave and runs about a mile north. As a centrally located, not-very-busy street, Midland is often the first leg of the races or fun runs [...]
I talk a lot about the benefits of living in a walkable suburb – the ease of meeting neighbors and the way you can really engage with a community when you’re on foot.
Talking with clients this past year about what they’re looking for in a house – or a in a town – I’ve had more conversations about mental well-being than I think I’ve had in [...]
I think I can speak for most when I say this past few months has been an incredible learning experience. From the minute New Jersey went on “lockdown,” all my colleagues and I could talk about was how will we do our jobs?
We learned how to make great use of virtual house-tour apps and what to do to make an in-person home tour safe. We learned how to get houses inspected and close under the most arduous circumstances. But maybe most important, as a society we learned to stop all our hurrying about and start to understand what we care about and value. What we want to take into the future with us.
Many of my clients adopted a more inward focus. Buyers started to care more about “comfort,” less about “image.” Grand spaces for entertaining became less important than a garage loft that could be converted into a home office. Also, short commutes to work from an apartment on the Upper West Side became less important than outdoor space.
We’ve also seen how size came to matter in a different way. Some sellers looked at their big houses as a welcome oasis, someplace where they could work and school their kids and have a little privacy from everyone else. Others began to see their big house as too much to take care of since they’d become the ones cleaning it every week.
Buying and selling decisions have become far more about “quality of life” – though not just about a person’s individual life. We’ve seen more people looking for quality of life in a community that’s consistent with their beliefs. A community’s dedication to welcoming all people has become a selling point like never before. I know as a society we still have a long way to go, but as someone raised in Manhattan, I can personally vouch for Montclair’s continued commitment to making our town feel like it’s a place where everyone belongs.
Helping people buy or sell a home has always been a very personal experience, and now it feels like an even deeper one. As always, I’m here to talk about any and every aspect of home buying or sales. Talk or text: (973) 809-5277
People have been asking what I’m seeing in New Jersey real estate these days.
There’s been a noticeable increase in people from the city interested in moving to the suburbs. People want to leave their apartments and are looking for lower density population areas and with more outdoor space. This is especially appealing now that so many [...]
Things are changing so rapidly. Last weekend we did open houses that were well attended. The houses were vacant, and we took precautions like opening all closet and interior doors to eliminate touching. We required everyone to sanitize their hands and wear booties and asked them to refrain from coming in at all in if they had recently [...]
I just came upon one of those cute 2-minute videos where a narrator explains some broad concept while a high-speed hand renders an animated line drawing to illustrate the point - in this particular case, the point being:
We All Need To Walk More!
The walking information should come as no surprise to anyone - the health benefits of walking [...]
I often tell clients how living in a walkable suburb just feels better, but have never given much thought to quantifying it. However, others apparently have! There's an article in the New Yorker ("How Trees Calm Us Down") that talks not only about how people feel healthier the more trees are around, but also goes on to say that the benefits [...]
Soon after starting a family, we moved into our first house in Montclair, which was across the street from a park. And although the playground was in need of a facelift back then, the park had a paved path, a climbing tree, a baseball diamond, a big pond, a fountain and a few weeping bushes that kids could tuck themselves into for [...]
As a longtime resident of Montclair, I've always thought of my town as a very friendly community. Apparently the U.S. Department of Transportation thinks so too; Montclair was just designated a [...]
I recently read an article in The Sacramento Bee that confirmed what I've suspected for a long time: Americans know that walking is good for their health and that they aren't doing enough of it. According to a survey commissioned by the major health-care provider Kaiser Permanente, a whopping 94% of Americans recognize the physical and [...]
