The real estate market in northern New Jersey is not a monolith. According to Mark Slade, a real estate professional with the Mark Slade Homes Team at Keller Williams, the mid-year snapshot across the six towns he tracks reveals a market splitting in two, with some submarkets accelerating while others cool. As of the latest weekly reading, Maplewood's Hyper Market Index – a ratio of under-contract properties to new listings – stands at 1.9, the highest among the towns Slade monitors. South Orange follows at 1.8. In contrast, Livingston has fallen to 0.6, well below the 1.0 threshold that defines a hyper market. The average across all six towns has dipped from 1.2 a month ago to 1.1 now.
Slade emphasizes that these figures show "positive and negative trends for some of the same towns at the same time." A buyer or seller relying on broad market headlines may make decisions based on conditions that do not apply to their specific town. The semi-annual data for the first half of 2026 highlights these disparities. Average sale prices in Maplewood rose from $1,073,000 in the first half of 2025 to $1,253,000 in the first half of 2026 – a 17% increase. South Orange increased from $1,064,000 to $1,176,000, while Livingston climbed from $1,263,000 to $1,409,000. West Orange saw gains from $705,000 to $765,000.
However, price appreciation alone does not tell the full story. The percentage of sales closing above asking price has shifted significantly. South Orange saw the largest increase in that metric, moving from 13.7% over asking last year to 14.8% this year. Maplewood's year-to-date figure stands at 16.9% over asking. Livingston, however, experienced a sharp reversal, with the percentage of sales above asking dropping from 7.3% in the first half of 2025 to just 1.9% in the same period this year – even as average prices rose. Union showed a similar pattern, falling from 5.7% to 3.3%. Slade interprets this as buyers in those markets being willing to pay higher absolute prices but less willing to enter bidding wars.
"In a low inventory market, buyers are going to behave that much more aggressively if they truly want – or need – to buy a house," Slade says. "The stronger the need, the higher they're willing to go." Transaction volume adds another layer. Unit sales are up across all six towns, but the increases are not concentrated in the highest-index markets. West Orange rose from 161 units in the first half of 2025 to 201 units this year. Union posted an even larger jump, from 103 units to 187 units. These are not the towns with the most intense buyer competition by Slade's index. They are, however, towns where reduced competitive pressure may have allowed more transactions to close – buyers who might have been outbid in Maplewood or South Orange finding success in adjacent markets.
According to Slade, this pattern reflects how competitive intensity in the highest-index towns redirects buyer activity. When Maplewood and South Orange are running at 1.9 and 1.8 respectively, some buyers get priced out or exhausted by the bidding process and shift their search to markets where they have a better chance of winning. Slade notes that buyers who have lost multiple offers tend to recalibrate over time. "We usually say they have to lose a few to finally start to take the advice we give them and incorporate it into their decision-making process," he says. That recalibration – toward more realistic offer strategies or toward different submarkets – may be part of what's driving volume gains in the lower-index towns.
Looking ahead, Slade expects the traditional mid-July through late-August slowdown in raw activity: fewer new listings, declining under-contract counts, and quieter open houses. However, he does not expect a proportional collapse in the index ratios. "We usually continue to see fewer listings and declining under-contracts as we progress through July and August, and then we ramp up again in September," Slade says. "My Hyper Market Index may not necessarily align with the anticipated drop-off, as the ratios may stay in line with one another." The distinction matters. If both listings and under-contracts decline at roughly the same rate, the ratio stays stable – meaning competitive conditions persist even as the absolute number of transactions falls. For sellers, a quieter summer does not necessarily mean a weaker market. For buyers, the leverage they might expect from seasonal slowdowns may not materialize in the highest-demand towns.
Slade's own pipeline reflects this. His team listed three properties in the past week and has three more scheduled over the coming weeks – an unusually active summer slate that he says reflects seller confidence in current conditions. The Hyper Market Index, developed by Slade and his team, is a weekly tracking tool that measures buyer-to-seller dynamics across Maplewood, South Orange, West Orange, Livingston, Union, and a sixth tracked town. It informs both pricing strategy for sellers and offer positioning for buyers. When working with buyers in Maplewood, Slade shares the 16.9% over-asking average directly. "That's the average," he tells them. "There are going to be some that are lower, maybe some even higher. But you need to incorporate that into your mindset because that's how the market is currently trending."
The index's utility lies in its granularity. A regional average obscures the difference between a 1.9 in Maplewood and a 0.6 in Livingston. For buyers and sellers making decisions that involve hundreds of thousands of dollars, that gap defines the strategy itself – determining whether to price aggressively to spark a bidding war or to target a realistic number and wait for the right offer.
