Hi, this is Mark Slade from the Mark Slade Homes team at Keller Williams Midtown Direct in Maplewood, New Jersey. There has been a lot of talk recently — a lot of chatter with polarized opinions — about how the real estate market has been treating our residents and their neighborhoods. I’m a firm believer that actual information is always the key to a true understanding. As a result, I wanted to make sure that I drilled down a little deeper so we could see if there was any other insight.
A few weeks ago, members of the Maplewood Township Committee expressed shock and concern about a property that closed in the Hilton neighborhood for $1.1 million.
I want to make it clear that the property on Hilton Avenue did sell for $1.1 million, but that property was almost 50% larger than the average sized property Hilton neighborhood that closed this year from January 1 to July 31.
So, putting things in perspective, the fact that the property was that much larger automatically tells us that focusing on price-only data skews the conversation. I went back to research the official neighborhoods (Nextdoor may have more or different names) provided by the Township website:
Then I broke out the closing data by neighborhood: to reiterate, first you’ve got the Hilton neighborhood (in green) that we just discussed; then College Hill (where I used to live, color-coded as light blue), Newark Heights (mint green) — and yes, it’s actually found on official maps as Newark Heights from the older days; then you’ve got the Valley neighborhood in lavender; further, there is the Jefferson Village neighborhood in tan, which we’ll call the downtown, and that’s basically Dunnell through Maplewood Ave.; and lastly, you’ve got Wyoming neighborhood in Orange.
This gives us a total of six neighborhoods.
Starting with the Hilton neighborhood, the average price paid for a home, so far year-to-date, was actually $690,000. I’m going to round off the stats, and the same Hilton neighborhood had an average sale price of $390,000 in 2019, 5 years ago, and pre-Covid.
In College Hill, the average price is now $1,100,000 versus $695,000 in 2019.
Continuing with Newark Heights, this year the average price sold is $962,000 versus $537,000, while the Valley neighborhood registered an average of $1,100,000 versus $677,100 in 2019.
Additionally, the Jefferson Village neighborhood came in at $1,177,000 versus $858,000 in 2019.
Lastly, the Wyoming neighborhood boasted the highest average price at $1,516,000 in 2025 vs. $833,000 in 2019, which is not a surprise given that those are the largest homes on the largest parcels of land in Maplewood.
This is in stark contrast to the Hilton neighborhood which has the smallest average parcels of land, most often one-tenth of an acre. Wyoming is usually at least double the acreage and then some.’
So how does this all compare?
Well, based upon what has closed so far this year versus the same period in 2019, there was a 77% increase in average price in the Hilton neighborhood, a more modest increase of 59% in College Hill, which I found surprisingly low. Newark Heights
had the highest percentage increase in average price at 79%. The Valley neighborhood came in at 63%, while the Jefferson Village neighborhood showed the lowest increase of only 37%, when comparing 2025 to 2019. The Wyoming neighborhood didn’t
disappoint at a 71% increase in average price over the same time.
The above results were mostly in line with my expectations, but numbers can be misleading, so I wanted to increase the quality of the data and thought that the best way to do that was to then put everything into dollars-per-square-foot measurements. Skipping over to the second to last column, you’re going to see that the average dollars-per-square-foot in the Hilton neighborhoodmin 2024 was $503/sf. The average dollars-per-square-foot in College Hill produced a slightly higher average of $526/sf; in Newark Heights, I calculated the average at $534/sf; in the Valley neighborhood, I found the stats to be the lowest at $490/sf; we then bounced back up the highest results for the Jefferson Village neighborhood at $609/sf; and lastly, the Wyoming neighborhood was found to be $582/sf.
I found it rather interesting that, given the enormous growth in average price in the Wyoming neighborhood to $1.5 million, the average per square foot price of $582 was less than that in the Jefferson Village neighborhood average of $609/sf, despite not showing as much growth in average price.
If you look at the math, the Hilton neighborhood is not necessarily out of whack. If you’re going to rank them, you have Jefferson Village as #1, Wyoming #2, followed by Newark Heights, then College Hill, and Hilton. So, the Hilton neighborhood ranks
fifth out of six neighborhoods.
Lastly, I wanted to evaluate the dollars-per-square-foot trends. You’ll see that the Hilton neighborhood came in tops at 92%. The College Hill neighborhood changed by only 56%, Newark Heights Road 79%, Valley 59%, Jefferson Village 73%, and lastly, Wyoming at 79%.
Going back to the fact I’ve been a resident since 1997, I vaguely remember the commentary during the first revaluation. The idea was that the township-assessed values were more reflective of their “then” values because, the Hilton neighborhood was more heavily taxed, given the long period of time between revals, for what is generally the smaller houses and parcels in town, compared to the Wyoming neighborhood, which appeared under taxed.
The tax Reval in 2007 was shocking for most of us and I witnessed my own property taxes go from $12,700 to $17,700. I also remember some of the commentary that expressed the belief that the reval would make the Hilton neighborhood that much more attractive because those people were being penalized (by being over-taxed) at that time back in 2007.
It looks like what was put forth in 2007 did benefit The Hilton neighborhood the most, but who doesn’t love to see their equity increase exponentially? Isn’t that one of the primary benefits of home ownership?
If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call at 917-797-5059. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you found this informative.
