Do you have to leave the NY metro area to find an affordable house for sale?
- PropertyShark’s latest report tracks the lowest median sales price per square foot
- It found NY and NJ areas with median sales prices under $300 per square foot
A four-bedroom, four-bath house with 1,371 square feet at 28 Henry St. in Huntington, NY, is on the market for $579,000, or $422 a square foot.
If you want to buy for the first time, do you have leave New York City far behind to find a property that is relatively affordable?
That’s a common mindset for the buyer who thinks of NYC as being just Manhattan and Brooklyn—the priciest parts—and is not familiar with the rest of the outer boroughs or the towns and suburbs around the city.
So if your buying plan consists of scouting properties in some far-flung state, you may want to consider a new report from PropertyShark, which found locations in the New York metro area with the lowest median sales price per square foot over the past 12 months. Several places on the list are at or somewhat near the national median listing price of $228 per square foot.
For example, the report found Newark, New Jersey, has a median sales price of $228 per square foot; Bayonne, N.J., $286 per square foot; the Bronx, $299 per square foot; and Guttenberg, N.J., $300 per square foot.
PropertyShark used median sales price per square foot as a metric to remove outliers and significantly over- or underpriced properties and very small dwellings.
“The median sale price per square foot gives sellers and buyers insights into typical asking prices in the market and allows for a more equal comparison of homes of different sizes,” wrote Eliza Theiss, senior writer for PropertyShark and author of the report.
The report identified 13 communities and boroughs that are within a 30-minute drive of Lower Manhattan where the median price per square foot is less than the metro NYC median sales price, which is $441 per square foot, with 11 in New Jersey, plus Staten Island, and the Bronx.
WFH in these more affordable areas
If your work is fully remote or your job requires you to be in the office infrequently, you could consider these areas farther outside the city limits with a median sales price below $200 per square foot: Bushkill, Penn., at $143 per square foot; Port Jervis, N.Y., at $157 per square foot; and Wantage, N.J., at $194 per square foot.
For areas that are known for low prices and large properties, look at Millstone, N.J., with a median sales price of $268 per square foot. The median size for houses there is 3,130, according to the report. Closer to NYC, in Suffolk County on Long Island, the community of Huntington, N.Y., commanded $304 per square foot, with a median house size of 2,780 square
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