Montclair Real Estate Market in the TV Spotlight

CBS' "Early Show" used a real estate listing at 30 Harvard St. in Montclair, priced at $529,900, as a backdrop for a segment on declining home prices today.

Indeed, the Montclair real estate market continues to shift as agents approach the traditionally hot summer season.

But the market is shaky all across the country according to the leading measure of U.S. home prices.

Data through March 2011, released this week by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, show that the U.S. National Home Price Index declined by 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011, after having fallen 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2010. The National Index hit a new recession low with the first quarter’s data and posted an annual decline of 5.1% versus the first quarter of 2010. Nationally, home prices are back to their mid-2002 levels.

Roberta Baldwin at the New Keller Williams NJ Metro Group in Montclair, whose listings include 30 Harvard St., said that figures for the second quarter of this year aren't in yet.

"But I would suggest that the trend will continue," she said. "As such, anyone who priced a house in the summer or fall of last year and brought it on in the first quarter to reflect last year's price assessment, as so many sellers have done here, means a disconnect between buyer and seller reality.

"If swift reductions haven't been made, the prognosis, in my opinion, is that the value of the home is now at least 8% less than it would have been last September," Baldwin said. "That would mean that a home priced at $800,000 based on a six- or nine-month-old price assessment, might be theoretically marketable at only around $725,000, or less.

"That is why the sell-through is so weak; buyers do not see current value, so they are offering 5 or 10 or 15% less than asking and try to build possibly further price drops into those offers to the chagrin of homeowners; many sellers, meanwhile, are standing fast, rejecting offers, just saying no to the statistics, hoping to find that one buyer who believes a particular house is worth more," she said.

Baldwin said that those sellers who have to move now face a most unpleasant scenario that becomes more disagreeable every week a house lingers on the market.

"Nonetheless, some houses, well-priced, well-located, and well-equipped, do sell," she said. "A small number sell quickly."

Baldwin appeared on ABC's "Nightline" earlier this week in a segment about a troubled U.S. housing market that has seen a 5 percent drop in prices over the past year.