New Jersey's housing market is outpacing the rest of the country, with median home prices pushing toward $585,000 and shore-town values jumping as much as 10 percent year over year, and a veteran developer says government bottlenecks deserve much of the blame for runaway costs.
While home sales nationally have slowed under the weight of elevated interest rates, the Garden State keeps defying the trend. Data released in July by New Jersey REALTORS pegged the statewide median home price between $540,000 and $585,000, reflecting a year-over-year increase of roughly 4.5 to 5.4 percent. In some Monmouth County shore towns, appreciation has run between 6 and 10 percent, Fox Business reported.
That strength stands in sharp contrast to parts of Florida, where prices in certain markets have actually declined. And WalletHub's 2026 ranking, published in early August, placed New Jersey second among all states as the best place to live in America, citing low premature-death and obesity rates among other factors.
Ralph Zucker has spent more than three decades developing residential and commercial properties across New Jersey. As CEO and president of Inspired by Somerset Development, he built Bell Works in Holmdel, a mixed-use campus he calls the world's first "metroburb." The concept blends urban amenities with a suburban setting, and the market has responded. Bell Works hit 98 percent occupancy by 2025, and rental rates there have nearly doubled since 2020.
Apple TV fans may recognize the building. It served as a filming location for the hit series "Severance."
Zucker told Fox News Digital that New Jersey's price growth comes down to fundamentals, quality of life, proximity to New York and Philadelphia, high-paying tech jobs, and year-round beach communities that keep attracting buyers even as affordability tightens elsewhere.
"You have a little bit of everything, and we're close to everything. We're close enough to New York, close enough to Pennsylvania, but we're no longer a place to connect New York and Philadelphia. New Jersey has very much come into its own, and really it's always been there, but the secret is out."
But Zucker did not stop at cheerleading. He pointed directly at local government as a force that keeps housing inventory artificially low, and prices artificially high. Municipal zoning bottlenecks, lengthy approval timelines, and inspection processes that he says do nothing to protect the public all add cost and delay supply.
"Restricted government policies raise the pricing... Builders, developers... We aim for public good. I will proudly say that the way I make a living is by making great places for great people, but I do it as a business. So the less impediments that government puts in my way while making sure that I do my job correctly with the right professionals will actually increase supply and lower the price to the consumer."
That argument will sound familiar to anyone who has watched housing costs climb in blue-state metros where permitting takes years and zoning boards treat every project like a public-comment marathon. New Jersey's property taxes are already among the highest in the nation. Layer on approval delays that stretch timelines and inflate construction budgets, and the math gets worse for buyers at every price point.
Zucker's latest project, LIDO Asbury Park, shows where the market is heading. Inspired by Somerset Development secured $211 million in construction financing for the development in Asbury Park, a small Monmouth County shore town founded in 1871 with a population just over 15,000. A penthouse unit at LIDO sold for $7.6 million, described as the most expensive condominium sale in New Jersey history.
The numbers tell a story about demand that government policy has failed to keep up with. Buyers are willing to pay record prices in a town that, not long ago, was better known for boardwalk nostalgia than luxury condominiums. The broader retail landscape in the Northeast has been shifting, too, Stop & Shop has been closing dozens of stores as consumer patterns change, but Asbury Park's trajectory runs in the opposite direction.
Karen Nelson, a lifelong New Jersey resident who has lived in Asbury Park for 17 years, recently purchased a preconstruction unit at LIDO. She also recently sold her previous property, getting close to her asking price in a market where many listings draw offers well above list.
Nelson told Fox News Digital she considered the half-year-in-Florida retirement plan many northeasterners choose, and rejected it.
"A lot of people, especially when they retire, they go to Florida, and I'm not really a Florida type of person, and I know a lot of people do the half-and-half, which I thought about, but I love Asbury all year-round. It's become more of an all year-round kind of place. So [I'm] happy here."
Nelson's decision to buy preconstruction was partly a hedge against the very dynamic Zucker described, a market where limited supply and regulatory drag keep pushing prices upward. She noted that new construction insulates buyers from bidding wars, since prices are set by the developer rather than driven up by competing offers.
"I think the big thing to remember is when you are buying new construction, you are securing that price, so you don't have to worry... You're still locking into that price. So that's a big thing because the market right now is going to continue to escalate. Who knows where it's going to be?"
Her LIDO unit is roughly a year and a half from completion. In a market appreciating at the rates Zucker cited, that gap between purchase price and delivery-day value could be significant, for better or worse.
Nelson sees Asbury Park's trajectory as still accelerating. New restaurants keep opening. Businesses keep arriving. The town that once emptied out after Labor Day now draws residents and visitors year-round. New Jersey's food and retail scene has shown resilience in pockets, Jersey Mike's, the state's homegrown sandwich chain, recently announced plans for 7,500 new stores as it pushes toward a billion-dollar IPO.
"I think it's actually just going to get better. People want to be here, and a lot of new businesses are evolving, restaurants, and everybody wants to be in Asbury. So I think it's just going to be bigger and better."
Zucker framed the housing supply problem as a failure of government process, not of market demand. He drew a clear line: qualified professionals should be allowed to do their jobs, and municipal governments should protect public safety without creating approval timelines that function as hidden taxes on homebuyers.
"The best way to protect the public interest and, at the same time, allow proper development to proceed at a better pace is to allow qualified professionals to do their job. Government can protect the public and, at the same time, accelerate and not cause the cost associated with long and arduous application process, inspection processes that do nothing to protect the public, do everything to slow the process down and increase the cost to the consumer."
It is a straightforward supply-and-demand argument, and one that conservatives have made about housing markets from California to Connecticut. When government makes it harder and slower to build, fewer units reach the market. Fewer units mean higher prices. Higher prices mean ordinary buyers, not developers, not speculators, bear the cost. The pattern plays out in grocery aisles, too. When New York City floated plans for government-run grocery stores, private operators warned the move would crush the businesses already serving those neighborhoods.
Zucker also pushed back against the idea that developers should focus only on profit margins. He argued that building for the end user, the person who will actually live or work in the space, produces better financial results than chasing the bottom line alone.
"People are going to tell you in real estate, as a developer, focus on the bottom line. And I'm telling you, focus primarily on the end user, on the people. Also, focus on the bottom line, if you do that, you'll be successful both at creating great places and being profitable. And I think that's an important distinction."
His "metroburb" model at Bell Works was built on that philosophy. The concept, urban energy in a suburban footprint, without the commute, took time to catch on. But 98 percent occupancy and doubled rents suggest the market validated it. Zucker coined the term himself, and he is unapologetic about the pitch.
"We coined the term literally to say that you can have a great metropolis in an awesome suburban location. You can have your cake and eat it, too. If we could create that metropolis in suburbia... without the commute, without the heartache, without all the stress that comes with getting in and out of, quote unquote, the city or downtown, we would have more subscribers than we could imagine, and that's exactly what happened."
Not every community welcomes that growth. The report noted concerns that new development in parts of Monmouth County is pricing some buyers out. That tension, between building enough housing to meet demand and preserving the character and affordability that attracted residents in the first place, is real. But Zucker's point is that government friction makes the problem worse, not better. Every month a project sits in a zoning queue, the eventual price tag climbs.
Across the retail and commercial landscape, businesses are making similar bets on whether demand in a given market justifies the cost of entry. Some chains are closing longtime locations as economics shift beneath them. In New Jersey's housing market, the economics keep pointing up, and the question is whether local governments will get out of the way fast enough to let supply catch demand before the next generation of buyers gets locked out entirely.
New Jersey's real estate market is not booming because of government. It is booming in spite of it. And the people paying the price for that distinction are the buyers who can least afford to wait.