The real estate market in northern New Jersey is not a single market, but a collection of submarkets moving in opposite directions, according to mid-year data from Mark Slade of the Mark Slade Homes Team at Keller Williams. As of the latest weekly reading, Maplewood's Hyper Market Index sits at 1.9, the highest among the six towns Slade tracks, while 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 the six towns has dipped from 1.2 a month ago to 1.1 now.
Slade notes that this data shows “positive and negative trends for some of the same towns at the same time,” which means buyers and sellers relying on broad market narratives may make decisions based on conditions that don't apply to their specific town. For instance, while average sale prices rose across all six towns in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025 – Maplewood up from $1,073,000 to $1,253,000, South Orange from $1,064,000 to $1,176,000, Livingston from $1,263,000 to $1,409,000, and West Orange from $705,000 to $765,000 – the percentage of sales closing above asking price tells a more nuanced story.
South Orange saw the largest increase in above-asking sales, moving from 13.7% to 14.8%, while Maplewood's year-to-date figure stands at 16.9% over asking. Livingston, however, saw a sharp reversal, with the percentage dropping from 7.3% to just 1.9%, and Union fell 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 engage in 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,” he says. “The stronger the need, the higher they’re willing to go.”
Transaction volume adds another layer to the divergence. 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 to 201 units, and Union jumped from 103 to 187 units. These towns, which have lower competitive pressure, may be attracting buyers who were outbid in Maplewood or South Orange and are shifting their searches to markets where they have a better chance of winning. Slade notes that buyers who lose multiple offers often recalibrate, either by adjusting their offer strategies or by looking at different submarkets.
Looking ahead to the summer slowdown, Slade expects the traditional pattern of fewer listings and declining under-contract counts, but he does not expect the Hyper Market Index ratios to collapse proportionally. “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,” he says. “My Hyper Market Index may not necessarily align with the anticipated drop-off, as the ratios may stay in line with one another.” If both listings and under-contracts decline at similar rates, competitive conditions will persist even as the absolute number of transactions falls. For sellers, a quieter summer does not necessarily mean a weaker market, and for buyers, the leverage they might expect from seasonal slowdowns may not materialize in the highest-demand towns.
Slade's own pipeline reflects this activity, with his team listing three properties in the past week and having three more scheduled, an unusually active summer slate that he says reflects seller confidence. The Hyper Market Index, a weekly tracking tool developed by Slade and his team, measures buyer-to-seller dynamics across Maplewood, South Orange, West Orange, Livingston, Union, and a sixth tracked town. It informs pricing strategy for sellers and offer positioning for buyers. When working with buyers in Maplewood, Slade shares the 16.9% over-asking average directly, advising them to incorporate that into their 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 involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, that gap defines the strategy itself – whether to price aggressively to spark a bidding war or to target a realistic number and wait for the right offer.
