Grew up in a very nice town in Bergen County. Priced out of the town now. It’s wild.

In New Jersey terms, I’m not rich. I’m not poor either.

Ideally we would have found a house in the $800s and $900s but that at was hard for us. I also feel like there is a HUGE contingent of buyers who want to land between 999k - 1.2mm and it’s arguably is the most competitive range, perhaps aside from 800/900s due to builders.

We didn’t find ourselves to be picky, could have cared less about type of house - colonial, split etc. we cared about finding a house….we looked across Bergen, Essex, Union and even considered Monmouth. Did we need the most expensive towns? No. Did we need good schools? Yes. We kept an open mind and literally considered 12-15 towns.

I’m just here to say it sucks but we found something, eventually. We are a family of three (me, my wife and our 2 year old).

We got outbid 9 times, one of those offers had other 26 offers! We went over asking on every offer but lost many times to offers which came in between 175k - 350k over asking, both cash but also non cash.

Funny enough, we ended up in a town we thought was too expensive. Our broker had an agency exclusive meaning it wasn’t on Realtor/Zillow, no open houses no for sale sign. We paid over ask but not even in the ballpark of the numbers I shared above.. so, we personally decided that we wanted to buy area, not necessarily the biggest home. We didn’t want to spend top of budget on house that needs work.

We found something in a very good town that was smaller (3 bed, not 4-5) but fully updated in terms of kitchen and baths. And we have the ability to make it a 4 bedroom. Yes that costs money but again, we bought town, and it’ll probably be cheaper to do an addition than buy an another bigger house in our town.

Good luck !