Belmar's single-family market, read in the numbers.
A supply-constrained coastal market where scarcity and liquidity — not affordability — are setting price.
Belmar research starts with the mid-2026 release; we'll add more towns and notes as we cover them.
Scores are public, human-reviewed town signals on a 0–100 scale. For where a specific home sits against them, send us the address.
A supply-constrained coastal market where scarcity and liquidity — not affordability — are setting price.
- 01The median sale price is up ~3.0% year-over-year (median $/sqft +7.2%); the gain is broad-based — price-per-foot is rising, not just the mix of what sold.
- 02The top decile of sales (above ~$2,625,000) accounts for about 23% of dollar volume — a meaningful luxury tail behind the median.
- Whether active inventory begins to expand, which would be the first sign of a supply-constrained market loosening.
- Whether price reductions accelerate from today's 0% of active listings — a rising share would signal the asking-vs-sold gap closing through softer asks rather than higher sales.
- Whether days-on-market lengthen from the current fast pace, which typically precedes any change in pricing power.
Based on 134 trailing-12-month single-family sales (116 with recorded size for $/sqft), recent data vintage. Town-level aggregate, so conviction is capped below 'High'.
Belmar remains a scarcity-driven, fast-clearing market with resilient single-family pricing; the principal near-term question is whether scarcity holds and demand stays intact as financing costs persist.
What our research found this period.
Briarwood Research's current read is that Belmar is a market in transition whose pricing drivers we are still resolving. The findings below are the evidence-backed conclusions behind that view; the risks and watch-items that would change it follow later in the report.
- Belmar's price appreciation is broad-based — it reflects rising value per square foot, not simply larger homes changing hands.
- A small luxury tail carries a disproportionate share of Belmar's dollar volume.
- 01High confidenceSurprise
Belmar's price appreciation is broad-based — it reflects rising value per square foot, not simply larger homes changing hands.
Evidence- Median sale price is +3.0% year-over-year while median $/sqft is +7.2%, and median home size -12.8%.
- Computed over 116 trailing-12-month single-family sales with recorded size.
Why it matters. Broad-based appreciation is more durable than a mix effect: it indicates the market is genuinely re-rating, not just trading a richer set of homes.
- 02Moderate confidenceSurprise
A small luxury tail carries a disproportionate share of Belmar's dollar volume.
Evidence- The top 10% of sales (above ~$2,625,000) account for about 23% of total dollar volume.
- That decile is, by definition, 10% of transactions — so its dollar weight is disproportionate.
Why it matters. The median understates how much of the market's value sits in the high end; luxury demand has outsized influence on aggregate pricing and is a distinct risk vector.
Belmar continues to behave like a supply-constrained coastal market. Scarcity and liquidity — not affordability — are the forces setting price here.
Prices have proved resilient: the trailing-twelve-month median sits at $1,132,500 across 134 sales, up about 3.0% on the prior year, even as financing costs have stayed elevated. Our Affordability Stress reading is only 70/100 — roughly 76% of median household income to principal and interest on the assumed rate — which says demand for desirable locations is continuing to outweigh affordability pressure rather than break against it.
- The trailing-12-month median sale price rose 3.0% to $1,132,500 (n=134), indicating continued pricing resilience despite higher borrowing costs.
- Sold $/sqft centers near $668/sqft across 116 eligible comps, but the spread is wide — the town median is a weak guide to any single block or condition tier.
At 94/100 supply reads severely constrained: active listings are very low relative to the town's housing base, which keeps structural pressure under prices even when demand cools. That is 2.6 up from the single prior published release (Δ +2.6) — a directional two-release comparison, not an index trend.
At 70/100 financing stress reads elevated: on the assumed mortgage rate the median home absorbs roughly 76% of median household income in principal and interest. That is a genuine stretch and it limits how far buyers can push — though scarcity, not financing cost, is what sets price here. (Mortgage rate is an explicit assumption — see limitations.)
Market structure
Belmar's recorded transaction base is 64% single-family and 26% condominium (530 sales on file). This is a detached-house market with a smaller attached segment; the report covers the single-family cohort.
The setting is a supply-constrained coastal town — our Scarcity Index reads 94/100, consistent with a limited, largely built-out housing base where new supply is hard to add.
We do not yet have enough evidence to characterise seasonality with confidence.
Where build year is recorded (n=147), 10% of the stock dates to 2000 or later — an older, established housing base with limited recent construction.
Direct buyer-profile and primary- vs second-home characterisation are not asserted: the transaction record does not carry occupancy or buyer-intent fields, so any such claim would be inference rather than evidence.
What happened: prices held their ground
Belmar's single-family median has moved lower across the cycle, from $1,502,500 in 2023 Q3 to $950,000 in 2026 Q1. The line is uneven quarter to quarter, and the volume bars beneath it show the reads rest on real transaction counts, not a handful of sales.
Over the trailing twelve months the median was $1,132,500 across 134 sales — up about 3.0% on the prior year. That the median has held and extended through a period of elevated financing costs is the clearest evidence that demand for the town is outweighing affordability pressure.
Decomposing the move: median price is +3.0% year-over-year while median $/sqft is +7.2% and median size -12.8%. The two rose roughly in step, so the gain is broad-based — this is appreciation, not just a richer mix of homes changing hands.
The shape beneath the median
A single town median hides a wide range. Across 116 eligibility-screened sales, sold $/sqft centers near $668/sqft, but the distribution runs from modest blocks into a substantial luxury tail. The shape — not just the midpoint — is the read: the town median is a weak anchor for any individual home.
On price, the middle 50% of trailing-12-month single-family sales runs $730,000 to $1,500,000 (median $1,110,000), with the 90th percentile at $2,625,000. The top decile alone accounts for about 23% of dollar volume — a luxury segment that moves the average well above the typical sale.
Liquidity & supply
As of 2026-07-14, Belmar carries 5 active single-family listings — too few to quote a reliable on-market days-on-market. Homes that closed recently sold in a median of about 48 days (18 recent closings), so the market is still clearing quickly even with the shelf this thin.
Price reductions are running at 0% of active listings; a low share is consistent with sellers holding firm rather than chasing the market down.
Months-of-supply and absorption cannot be computed from the current feed: the active snapshot carries no recent closed-sale pace, so we report it as not available rather than derive it from an incomplete denominator.
New-listing flow and expired/withdrawn counts are not captured in the current active feed; those liquidity signals are flagged as not yet available.
| Active-market metric | Reading |
|---|---|
| Active listings | 5 |
| Median days on market | not available |
| Median days to sell (recent closings) | 48 days |
| Median asking price | not available |
| Median asking $/sqft | not available |
| Price-cut share | 0% |
| Stale (90+ day) share | 9% |
| Months of supply | not available |
Redevelopment & builder demand
New-construction turnover is minimal: among single-family sales with a recorded build year (n=147), 5 were built within three years of sale.
Lot-level teardown and redevelopment signals are not asserted: lot-size is sparsely and unreliably recorded in the current comp set, so a redevelopment-intensity read would be fabricated. This is a priority data gap — redevelopment economics are where Briarwood intends to differentiate, and the signal is defined but not yet evidenced for this town.
Builder Demand and Renovation Spread are tracked as proprietary indices but are not yet scored for this town (they require inputs the current evidence base does not carry); they are monitored, not reported as values.
Property typology
Where bedroom count is recorded (75% of single-family sales), the market tiers cleanly by size. The table reads the price and $/sqft of each tier; note that larger homes carry a higher absolute price but the $/sqft gradient is what isolates location and quality from sheer size.
Segmentation by architectural style (ranch / cape / colonial) and by renovated-vs-dated condition is not available — those fields are essentially unpopulated in the current record, so we do not assert a style- or condition-based breakdown.
| By bedrooms | Sales | Median price | Median $/sqft |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 bed or fewer | 49 | $630,000 | $717/sqft |
| 3 bed | 69 | $800,000 | $593/sqft |
| 4 bed | 62 | $1,187,500 | $612/sqft |
| 5+ bed | 73 | $1,650,000 | $654/sqft |
Neighbourhood & micro-market
Insufficient evidenceNamed micro-markets (beach blocks, east/west of key roads, waterfront vs non-waterfront, larger-lot redevelopment pockets) are not segmented in this edition: the subtown, location-tag, and micro-location fields are essentially unpopulated in the current comp record, so any neighbourhood-level claim would be invented. Geographic coordinates are present on 100% of sales, which gives a future path to a defensible coordinate-based cut (distance-to-beach, sub-area) once a reviewed boundary definition is in place — it is deliberately not estimated here.
Renovation economics
Insufficient evidenceA renovated-vs-dated premium cannot be measured: the comp record does not carry a reliable condition or renovation field, and Renovation Spread is not yet scored for this town. Rather than infer a premium from price alone — which would confound size, location, and condition — we report this as insufficient evidence.
The history behind the read.
Scarcity Index · index_score · 2 observed points
Scarcity Index moved -1.28
From 2026-06-12 to 2026-07-11, observed value changed from 91.02 to 89.74.
Active listings · count · 11 observed points
Active listings moved -4
From 2026-06-22 to 2026-07-14, observed value changed from 9 to 5.
| Metric | Prior | Current | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affordability Stress Index | 71.1 | 68.2 | ↓-2.9 |
| Liquidity Index | 84 | 89.5 | ↑5.5 |
| Scarcity Index | 91 | 89.7 | ↓-1.3 |
Liquidity Index moved +5.54
Liquidity Index had the largest current-vs-prior move.
What the read means.
- For buyers: the binding constraint is availability, not headline affordability. Competition concentrates on well-priced, move-in-ready homes in desirable blocks; patience tends to be rewarded mainly where an ask has run ahead of comparable sales.
- For owners: scarcity and quick absorption continue to support values, but this is a town-level baseline — condition, block, and flood exposure still decide where a specific home sits against it.
The signals we'll keep monitoring.
- Whether active inventory begins to expand, which would be the first sign of a supply-constrained market loosening.
- Whether price reductions accelerate from today's 0% of active listings — a rising share would signal the asking-vs-sold gap closing through softer asks rather than higher sales.
- Whether days-on-market lengthen from the current fast pace, which typically precedes any change in pricing power.
- Whether the high-end (the $800+/sqft tail) holds its share of transactions, since the luxury segment carries a meaningful part of dollar volume.
- Redevelopment and new-construction activity — tracked via Builder Demand, which Briarwood monitors but does not yet score for this town.
- Whether buyer demand softens if financing costs stay elevated; that would surface first in absorption and days-on-market, not in the headline median.
Where our read could be wrong.
- Rates: the affordability read rests on a mortgage-rate assumption. A sustained move higher would pressure demand first through absorption and days-on-market, then price.
- Inventory expansion: the thesis depends on supply staying scarce. A durable rise in active listings would loosen the structural pressure that is currently holding prices firm.
- Flood & insurance exposure: coastal location carries flood-zone and insurance-cost risk that can re-rate desirability block-by-block; this report does not yet incorporate parcel-level flood data, so it is a known uncovered risk.
- Luxury slowdown: with a meaningful share of dollar volume in the high-end tail, a pullback in luxury demand would weigh on the median more than transaction counts alone would suggest.
- Local affordability ceiling: at the current price level, demand depends on out-of-area and second-home buyers; a broad demand cooling would surface here before it shows in the median.
- Thin samples: single-family $/sqft and the active-listing count rest on modest samples, so short-run readings can move on composition; we weight trend over any single release.
Availability, not headline affordability, is the binding constraint in Belmar. Use the town baseline to frame the ask, then test the specific home — condition, block, and comp fit decide where a given listing should land against it.
Want a read on a specific Belmar property?
Send the address and we'll tell you how it compares with the rest of the town — a direct analysis from our research team, not an automated score.
- Observed facts — closed-sale prices, dates, and property attributes from Briarwood's proprietary Belmar transaction record (337 single-family sales), and the curated active-market aggregate as of 2026-07-14.
- Derived statistics — medians, distributions, and $/sqft, computed deterministically from those facts (no estimation, no smoothing).
- Proprietary signals — the Liquidity, Scarcity, and Affordability Stress indices, Briarwood computations over the same evidence rather than third-party scores.
- Research interpretation — the Briarwood Research findings, market thesis, competing hypotheses, and conviction; labelled throughout as our reading of the evidence, not fact.
- Forward-looking monitoring — the watch-items and risks, framed as what Briarwood Research will track as data accumulates, not as predictions.
- No external institutional research is cited as proof of any local fact; external macro/framework context, where used, is confined to framing and never to town-specific claims.
Evidence Notes
- Briarwood SOLD comp record for Belmar: 337 sales through 2026-06-24.
- Trailing-12-month window 2025-06-24 → 2026-06-24: 134 sales (prior year 85).
- $/sqft computed over 116 eligibility-screened comps (nominal-deed and outlier rows excluded).
- Active-market read from the approved curated aggregate, as of 2026-07-14.
Limitations
- This public report is a town and segment baseline, not a property-specific recommendation.
- The current (partial) quarter is excluded from the price trend; medians cover complete quarters only.
- Aggregate medians blend block, condition, and size; a specific home can sit far from the town median.
- Active inventory is thin (5 listings as of 2026-07-14); on-market reads carry wide error.
- The Affordability Stress reading rests on an explicit mortgage-rate assumption and town median household income; it frames financing stretch, not a forecast.
- Index movements are measured against the prior published release; the public baseline is still building (few observed points), so treat the deltas as directional, not trend.
Research disclaimer. Briarwood Research is independent market analysis prepared for informational purposes. It draws on public records (NJ SR1A deed transfers and MOD-IV assessments), third-party data (ATTOM), and Briarwood's own valuation models; figures are estimates, not a licensed appraisal, and nothing here is an offer, a solicitation, or investment advice. Confirm property-level facts before acting on any decision.