Ask a couple people how the housing market is doing and you’ll probably get a couple different answers. That’s because right now, the market runs on two very different tracks, split by price point.
The national version of that story uses numbers that don’t describe Monmouth or Ocean County at all. Worth understanding both, because the split is real here — it just falls in a different place.
What the national housing market split looks like
The pattern in the national data is stark. NAR sales data shows homes under $250,000 selling less than a year ago, while homes above $750,000 have seen sales climb by double digits.
Realtor.com found the same divide even more sharply at the extremes: sales below $200,000 fell 14.4% year over year through May, while sales between $1 million and $2 million slipped just 0.6%.
The cause is affordability, not taste. Entry-level buyers feel every quarter-point of mortgage rate. Buyers at the top are far less rate-sensitive, often bringing cash, stock gains, or equity from a previous home.
There’s a quieter finding underneath it. Realtor.com reports that the share of online shopping traffic going to homes under $370,000 has fallen 11.4 percentage points since 2021. Those buyers didn’t move upmarket. They stopped looking.
Why those numbers don’t describe our market
Here’s the problem with applying that nationally-framed housing market split to the Shore: both of the national tiers are wrong for us.
Homes under $250,000 barely exist in Monmouth County outside of specific condo and 55-plus communities. And $750,000 — the threshold where national sales are booming — is close to ordinary for a single-family home in much of the county. It isn’t a luxury number here. It’s a Tuesday.
Zillow defines luxury as the top 5% of local values rather than a fixed national figure, and that’s the right way to think about it. Your house isn’t entry-level or high-end in absolute dollars. It’s entry-level or high-end relative to the town it sits in.
Where the split actually falls here
Locally the divide runs along two lines, and neither is $250,000.
Geography. Coastal Monmouth and inland Ocean County are effectively different markets for comparable square footage. A house that’s upper-tier in one is mid-tier in the other.
Product type. Condos, townhomes, and 55-plus units occupy the lower band. Detached single-family near the water occupies the upper. They behave differently even in the same town.
The dynamic underneath is the same as the national one, though. The buyers still comfortably active here are the ones with equity from a previous sale or income that absorbs a mid-6% rate. The buyers who have gone quiet are the ones stretching for a first purchase.
What this means if you’re selling
Find your local tier, not the national one. Ask what percentile your house occupies in your specific town. That number tells you far more than whether you’re above or below $750,000.
If you’re in the lower band for your town, pricing and presentation carry more weight than they did two years ago. Your buyer pool is thinner and more rate-sensitive, and it will not stretch to meet an optimistic number. This is where price reductions actually happen around here.
If you’re in the upper band, you have more room, but not unlimited room. Upper-tier inventory has grown nationally, which means those buyers have more to choose from than they did. Well-priced still wins; overpriced still sits.
What this means if you’re buying
If you’re shopping the lower band for your area, you have more leverage than you’ve had in years, precisely because your competition dropped out. Fewer rival offers, more time to inspect, more willingness to negotiate.
If you’re shopping the upper band, expect competition to look more like 2019 than 2021 — real, but not frantic.
The bottom line
The housing market split is genuine, but it’s a split by percentile, not by a fixed dollar figure. Reading national thresholds onto a market where the median single-family home runs well into the six figures leads sellers to misprice and buyers to misjudge their own position.
The useful question isn’t which side of $750,000 your house falls on. It’s where your house sits among recent sales on your own street — and that’s a number worth getting before you make any decisions.
National figures reflect NAR, Realtor.com, and Zillow data as of 2026. Local tiers vary considerably by town and property type; for where a specific home sits in its local market, ask for a current comparative market analysis.
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