New Jersey home prices rise more than other states

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Housing values keep going up in New Jersey:

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Home prices across the New Jersey climbed nearly 6% in February compared to a year earlier, the sharpest gain of any state in the nation, according to figures released this week by Cotality, a property data firm. 

The national average over that same stretch is only half a percent. The Garden State did not just beat the field. It lapped it. 

Why the bigger rise in New Jersey?

The state’s dense corridor of finance and fintech firms, pharmaceutical giants and biotech campuses has kept demand humming even as buyers elsewhere pump the brakes. 

Cotality analysts specifically flagged New Jersey’s high-wage employment base as a structural driver of housing demand, one that insulates the market from the volatility hitting Sun Belt states hard right now. 

I might put it another way as someone who studies suburbs: the state is positioned between two major metropolitan areas, New York City and Philadelphia. This both provides access to jobs and opportunities there but includes its own large collection of suburban jobs and opportunities across numerous communities that have different industries and populations. The fate of these suburban possibilities are tied to what happens in these big cities but it also has some life of its own.

Also worth noting: with these housing pressures, New Jersey is home to a number of affordable housing conversations and decisions over the years.

Age for first-time homebuyers keeps ticking up

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Two recent reports suggest first-time homebuyers in the United States are older than in the past:

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In November, the National Association of Realtors reported that the age of first-time buyers has incrementally increased since 2010, when the typical age was 30, to hit a record high of 40. In the meantime, the median age of repeat buyers, those who already own a home and are buying their next home — also hit a record high of 62.

Redfin researchers used a different methodology and found that while the typical home buyer is older than in the past, their average age for a first-time home purchase is 35…

The percentage of home buyers purchasing a home for the first time dropped to 21 percent in 2025, according to NAR, compared with about 40 percent before the Great Recession. Factors in that delay include high home prices, a lack of affordable homes, relatively high mortgage rates and student loan debt.

Another factor is the difficulty saving money for a down payment. First-time home buyers typically make a down payment of 6 percent to 10 percent of the purchase price, but many believe a 20 percent down payment is required.

Even with some broader conversation about the need at a national level to address housing, why aren’t more politicians and leaders tackling this one? Those with power could help provide opportunities for younger adults and potentially receive their votes. Many communities say they want to have housing where their younger adults can stay or young professionals could live but is this actually possible in many places? And what would it take to get there?

To address this would require working with a lot of potential levers. Builders and developers could be smaller and cheaper starter options. Local communities could approve or incentivize units for younger adults. The federal government could help. Consumers could push in particular directions. And so on.

At the moment, the issue appears to keep getting worse and unless there is some major action, my guess is that it will continue to go this way.

First suburban referendum to ban future data centers

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Voters in a Milwaukee suburb supported a local referendum to ban more data centers within the community:

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City residents who sponsored the voter initiative said it marks an escalation of tactics to oppose the massive facilities needed to power artificial intelligence and could inspire activists in other towns to follow suit….

The Port Washington referendum doesn’t actually derail the city’s controversial data center campus — a $15 billion, 1.3-gigawatt facility from tech giants OpenAI and Oracle that’s one of multiple “Stargate” AI megaprojects the companies are planning with the Trump administration’s support. Instead, it takes aim at future projects by requiring city leaders to obtain voter approval before awarding developers lucrative tax incentives…

The referendum could be frozen within days as part of an ongoing court challenge. The Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce, a regional business group, filed a lawsuit in late January seeking to block the measure on grounds that it violates state law…

Residents in Monterey Park, California, will decide in June on a measure seeking to indefinitely ban new data center construction within city limits. In August, Augusta Township in rural Michigan will decide whether to override a local ordinance that cleared the way for a data center project. And in November, Janesville, Wisconsin will vote on a measure that could scuttle plans to redevelop a former General Motors assembly plant into an AI factory.

This is a different way for communities to address data centers: put a referendum on the ballot and let local residents express their opinions through a vote.

Perhaps this context is unique. The article suggests some local officials opposed the ban. Can suburbs pass up on major developments that could be local revenues and jobs? It sounds like residents in this suburb were responding to a big data center already in the works that they did not like. Perhaps residents did not feel that local officials represented their interests?

At the same time, it takes planning and work to put together referendums for local residents to consider. Port Washington is not big – over 12,000 residents – but there are calendars to be followed to get placed in front of voters and signatures that are needed. Then there is public discussion. Then there is the vote and the aftermath as different groups consider their options.

Of course, a primary recourse residents have if they do not like local decisions about data centers is to vote accordingly the next time local leaders are up for election. Those opposed to or in favor of data centers could make this a major issue in upcoming elections as smaller communities grapple with what data centers might bring.

Suburban HQ building vacant for 18 years to be used by a small Bible college

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A long-vacant former corporate headquarters in a Chicago suburb will soon be home to a Bible college:

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Dayspring’s journey is a tale of three homes, a decades-old contact and a generous gift. And it’s led them to the long-abandoned CF Industries corporate headquarters adjacent to the Heron Creek Forest Preserve near Route 22 and Old McHenry Road.

Empty and vandalized over 18 years, the 120,000-square-foot, brick-faced concrete and steel “miracle” building will be revived, revamped and modernized with an expected move in fall 2027…

That will allow the college of about 80 students to accommodate twice as many, double the current square footage and be closer to the Quentin Road Baptist Church in Lake Zurich, where the college found a home in its early years…

Church leaders met with residents in neighboring subdivisions to discuss the vision and hosted an open house and barbecue before making the case to the village’s advisory plan commission and zoning board of appeals. Approval was unanimous and the village board followed suit…

Long Grove also is benefiting from the move. For the college’s soon-to-be neighbors, having an academic institution with a 24/7 presence will eliminate trespassing and vandalism concerns and greatly reduce calls for service to the Lake County sheriff’s office, said Long Grove Village Manager Chris Sparkman.

Having studied religious buildings, I find this story interesting on multiple levels.

First, suburban communities tend not to want to have vacant buildings. Structures should be productive, preferably producing tax revenue and/or contributing to day to day life in the community. A former headquarters building is an opportunity for another business to make it their own.

Second, having a vacant suburban building for 18 years in a wealthier suburb is a long time of vacancy. Even if a suburb might have wanted a corporate taker for this building, they might be happier after 18 years to have any productive use. As the story suggests, the community is glad someone will be taking care of the property and the approvals process went smoothly.

Third, religious groups are often willing to use all sorts of buildings and properties if they can adapt it. This is not a religious congregation – though it is a school connected to a particular congregation – but they are taking a corporate headquarters, cleaning it up, and plan to make it a religious school. Also noted in the story: acquiring the corporate headquarters required Hobby Lobby purchasing it and giving it to the congregation/school.

In the end, the suburb has a tenant for a long empty building, the former property owner was able to sell the property that sat for a long time, and a religious congregation/school has a new suburban home.

AI to help me find an expensive home that is within walking distance to Whole Foods

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What kind of potential homebuyer is Homes.com aiming to reach with their AI assisted search (“Homes Ai”)? About 20 seconds in, the video includes this line:

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Narrow it down to homes walkable to a Whole Foods.

According to a few search results, there are over 500 Whole Foods locations in the United States. Who tends to live within walking distance of these locations?

The video keeps going with the theme. After seeing some expansive interiors and a gourmet kitchen with the AI chipping in that it has white quartz countertops, the final home shown is $1.425 million.

The homes depicted appear to be in single-family home, if not suburban, neighborhoods.

So it appears “Homes Ai” is aimed at a wealthier potential homebuyer with particular lifestyle interests? Could “Homes Ai” help people search for reasonably priced housing or affordable housing?

“Informal housing” and affordable housing in the postwar suburbs

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Historian Michael Glass describes how informal housing units came to be in the postwar suburbs:

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Yes, this was a major surprise during my research. While scanning through microfilm reels of local newspapers, I kept coming across exposés of “illegal apartments,” that is, single-family homes illegally converted for multifamily occupancy. This took many forms: owners might rent out the basement, convert the garage into a dwelling, or wall off the attic as a separate apartment. Urban planners conducted comprehensive studies, and they estimated that by the 1970s between 10 and 20 percent of the single-family homes had been subdivided. A truly astounding statistic! 

In addition to being exclusionary and costly, the postwar suburban development model was completely unsustainable. Today the housing stock in Nassau County consists almost entirely of single-family dwellings. But people in the suburbs also needed cheap rentals, especially low-income families, young singles, divorced couples, retirees, and undocumented immigrants. Because zoning prohibited multifamily housing in most places, homeowners and landlords met these needs by converting single-family homes into apartments. 

The apartments were hidden, but certainly not a secret. Local officials absolutely knew the subdivisions were happening, and they let it continue because the informal apartments were meeting important housing needs. What I take from scholars of informal housing in the Global South – folks like Ananya Roy and Raquel Rolnick – is that turning a blind eye is itself a policy choice. It’s a way for government officials to manage housing needs in a context of scarcity. 

My basic argument is that informal apartments became the tacit solution to the affordable housing crisis. It helped resolve contradictions: local officials could simultaneously declare their opposition to new apartment construction while continuing to quietly tolerate informal units. 

People needed housing in the growing suburbs, homeowners adapted their properties, and local officials responded by not doing much. I wonder how much the lack of local reaction discovered was due to:

  1. The actual need for housing. How many units were needed in the postwar decades, particularly in comparison to today? Even as suburbs were growing rapidly, how much would local officials admit that even more housing was needed?
  2. The reference in the quote above to apartments is interesting as many suburban communities did consistently resist apartments because this might lead to different kinds of residents and affect the character and property values of nearby single-family homes. Informal housing is preferable to apartments until when?
  3. What happened when local residents complained about informal units? Say a resident suggests their neighbor has created an informal housing unit in violation of local regulations. How did local officials respond given #1 and #2 above? The quote above refers to media exposes so there must have been some local responses.

This might fit into a bigger story of suburban residents who since World War Two have used their homes and properties in ways that go against local regulations or what was expected. The idea of property rights is pretty important in many suburbs but so is the impulse to not have one’s property and housing values threatened by nearby land uses.

Big questions science fiction and sociology commonly ask

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Science fiction is not my favorite fiction genre. But, having recently read The Sparrow, watched Project Hail Mary, and read plenty of Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Jules Verne, and Ray Bradbury, among other novels, I was reminded that science fiction and sociology often ask the same big questions. These include:

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  1. How do humans deal with big social and/or technological change? These changes mark the modern era but we do not always have opportunities to reflect.
  2. Can humans and societies come together to tackle common problems? Under what conditions would people set aside differences and conflicts or will these hinder human efforts to address problems or changes?
  3. What does it mean to be human and work together in large groups? This can come to the fore when humans come into contact with other beings.
  4. How do humans make meaning when their worlds are disrupted? Humans are meaning-making creatures who have to fit major changes into the way they approach the world.

These different fields might not approach the questions in the same way and they may not come to the same answers but there is some overlap in what they consider.

The scale of New York City in an American perspective

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As a sociologist who studies places, this always stands out to me when I visit New York City: its scale and size. Other American cities and places have small aspects of what New York has but NYC has more. Density, skyscrapers, mass transit, large parks, commercial activity, waterways, sidewalk life, a variety of neighborhoods, and history going back to the mid-1600s.

This might be most visible from up above. Coming in via airplane over New York City, you see the reach of the metropolitan region even before you get to the five boroughs. You see the tall buildings, not just in one location, but in multiple settings (midtown Manhattan, downtown Manhattan, along the rivers, in Brooklyn, in Jersey City, etc.). Development and human activity is evident everywhere. Standing at the top of the Empire State Building (picture above), you can hear some of the street noise even as you observe people and vehicles moving around.

But this is also evident at the street level. There is a level of activity across the city. Denser residential buildings and close-together single-family units. Tons of small businesses and restaurants as well as multinational corporations. Street traffic and overlapping mass transit systems that mean you can traverse the city without cars. Busy outlying neighborhoods in addition to the activity of Manhattan.

There is an argument that larger cities are scaled up versions of smaller cities. (See this book for an example.) I am more familiar with Chicago than New York City and for the Midwest, Chicago is the big city. But then travel to Los Angeles or New York – and I have been to both numerous times – and Chicago looks and feels smaller (even as LA and NYC are very different places). New York City is the big city for the United States. It is the leading global city in numerous lists and studies. Other big cities have their own unique features or have smaller versions of what New York has. As one quote says, “America has only three cities. New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

I have been in even larger cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong. From above and on the ground, both of these cities are on a different scale compared to New York City. But that is a possible story for future posts. For now, New York City is the big American city.

The agony of losing a childhood sports team leading to federal legislation

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Several lawmakers said their personal experiences contributed to proposing legislation that would make it harder for sports teams to leave a city and go elsewhere:

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He doesn’t even really root for the Chicago Bears, but U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders says he wants to ensure Bears fans — and sports fans of all stripes — are protected from the heartbreak he suffered as a teenager, when his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers left for Los Angeles.

Sanders, the independent Vermont senator and two-time presidential candidate, threw his support behind long-shot legislation Thursday that would give communities a chance to keep their professional sports teams if their owners threatened to leave. Under the proposal, local leaders would have a year to find another buyer for the sports team or to organize a community ownership structure, like that used by the Green Bay Packers, to take over the team instead…

The penalties under the new proposal would apply if team owners relocate their home facility across state lines or out of metropolitan areas.

“Professional football is America’s religion,” Sanders said, when touting the need to promote activities like professional sports that bring people of different backgrounds together…

The impact of those moves can linger for generations, the lawmakers said. Casar talked about the loss he felt when the Houston Oilers left the city for Nashville in 1996.

Three things stick out to me from this overview:

  1. Childhood commitments to teams stick with people. Jerry Reinsdorf has also discussed how the move of the Dodgers to LA affected him. Plenty of Americans have experienced this, including lots of kids.
  2. The moving across state lines strikes me as not the same thing as moving out of metropolitan regions. I know it involves different bodies of government but the metro area is the more important factor here for fans. If the Bears end up in Indiana and the Chiefs are in Missouri, fans have not lost a team.
  3. Sanders suggests football is religion and he is right in certain ways: it prompts vast followings, fans come together across different backgrounds, stadiums are sacred spaces, the Super Bowl is a sacred event, and so on. Sports is a kind of functional religion.

It sounds like the goal of this legislation is to limit the benefits wealthy team owners can derive from playing places against each other regarding stadiums and teams. If an owner threatens to leave in order to get more taxpayer money or a better deal, this legislation gives communities other options. Whether this saves the children of America from sports heartbreak might be a secondary benefit.

What private equity expects from suburban residential developments and “a revenue gap”

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A new proposed residential development in suburban St. Charles sparked discussion about the possibility of including affordable housing:

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A 29-acre site in St. Charles — one of the last remaining open properties in town for residential development — is becoming a flashpoint for housing affordability in the city.

With a new proposal on the table, some city officials are requesting affordable units while the project’s developers argue it would hurt their private equity-backed bottom line…

The developers said they are trying to support retail along the Randall Road corridor by “attracting residents with disposable income.” City officials responded by saying there are people who work for the city who can’t afford to live there.

During the March 16 meeting, the developers said offering affordable units, such as a $1,070-per-month studio, would “provide a revenue gap.”

The basics of the story are not unusual for suburban residential development projects. A developer sees an opportunity. Upscale residential units can bring a good profit and upscale suburban communities tend to like residential properties that enhance their status and character. The city responds to the proposal with a few requests, including requesting some affordable housing units for several groups in the community the suburb would like to retain or attract. A period of negotiation or dialogue commences.

What is different here is that the developer has clearly stated that substituting affordable housing units will lead to a revenue problem. Why? Because there are expectations from the private equity supporting the development. The article does not discuss the details (and they may not be publicly available) but it sounds like it can be put another way: not enough money will be made on this development if affordable housing is included.

Profit-making is not unexpected. The clash between private equity money and affordable housing is less often in the public view. What amount or percentage does private equity expect to make on residential development? Can it make room for any affordable housing or is it completely about profit maximization?