Houses Under Contract: A Summertime Real Estate Lull

What's going on? According to the Trulia real estate Web site, fewer than 30 homes have gone under contract in eight northern New Jersey towns in the past week. Could it be a ripple effect from the July 4th weekend? Who knows? But it seems all towns have suffered a slight decrease in the number of homes on the market. Only time will tell if this is a troubling trend that's likely to continue this summer.

This is the number of homes that went under contract from July 4 to July 10, 2010.
Livingston = 2
Maplewood = 6
Millburn/Short Hills = 6
Montclair = 5
Nutley = 1
South Orange = 2
Verona = 3
West Orange = 2

The list below shows how many residential houses were for sale at the end of last week (July 10) in the Garden State Multiple Listing Service (GSMLS):
Livingston = 147
Maplewood = 161
Millburn/Short Hills = 107
Montclair = 180
Nutley = 158
South Orange = 135
Verona = 100
West Orange = 41

When asked about the trend, Roberta Baldwin, a dynamo agent with Keller Williams Realty, said that: "It's summertime, mid-July, when people want to have fun, when the beach is a lure for those in our area, when kids are coming and going from camp. Only the diehards who need to be relocated by September 1 are out there. It's also unrelentingly hot. In toto, a recipe for not house-hunting! Can we blame them? Of course, our sellers aren't so sanguine about the summer lull."