New homes in demand on Long Beach Island
It is looking like the good ol' days on Long Beach Island, before there was a Great Recession and such a thing called a superstorm.
Nearly two years ago the barrier island had, in some areas, represented the worst of superstorm Sandy's destruction: collided homes, leaking gas mains and debris-strew streets. The October 2012 storm rang up $23.3 million in damage to 2,100 homes, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency data.
Now the island is seeing a wave of new construction, and it is more than just rebuilding. Demand for new homes is high, experts and real estate officials say, thanks in part to new elevation requirements and a federal dune replenishment project seen as a strong front line of defense in the case of another monster storm.
Town halls up and down the barrier island have seen the most new construction in years, officials say. By the end of summer more than 420 new building permits had been issued among the six towns since 2013, according to local and state Department of Community Affairs data. Most of those — 302 — were written in Long Beach Township, the largest municipality on the 18-mile long island, according to the data. New building permits are for new homes. Additions and alterations get separate permits.
Property data show that the number of vacant lots on the island increased, from about 1,400 in 2012, the year of the storm, to about 1,700 this year, suggesting more opportunities to build. Those figures may include lots where a home was demolished or land that has been subdivided.
"We're busy. Everybody's busy," said Lynda J. Wells, the clerk for Long Beach Township.
That includes real estate agents, who say they noticed interest pick up about six to eight months after the storm.
"It became evident that the market was on a pretty fast track and it's remained on a pretty fast track," said Rick Jones, a real estate agent with G. Anderson Agency.
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The demand for new homes reflects a sense of security among investors and future homeowners that Long Beach Island is safe from another storm like Sandy despite being bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay, officials and experts say.
In fact, that's a selling point, Jones said.
"Everywhere you're at on LBI you're close to the beach, and you feel the breezes, you smell the air, and it's not unique in that respect but it adds up to a very attractive package for folks," he said. After the storm, "Everybody recognized that the island would start shining fairly quickly, and the pace of the rebuild has been sensational. Everybody anticipated, I think correctly, that it would add to the island, that two to five years after Sandy that the island would just start looking better than it had prior to Sandy, and that's exactly what's taking place."
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Officials and real estate agents don't dare call it a boom, though. Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini swatted down such a characterization, saying, "There are 9,000 properties in Long Beach Township, and with 300 (new building) permits, it's not a very big percentage." Mancini is also a developer whose family had a major hand in building out the island after the devastating Ash Wednesday storm of 1962. Mancini is now building homes in the Holgate section priced up to $1 million.
That's an average price comparable to the boom of 10 years ago, real estate agents said. Home sales data shows increases in the median sale prices in four of the six island towns between 2013 and this year. Barnegat Light had the largest increase, from $583,750 to $715,000, followed by Long Beach Township, from $620,000 to $700,000, according to the data. Jones said the average "ticket" of a house sold in August was more than $1.4 million, showing "a tremendous amount of strength at the high end, but it's strong across all price points."
The new flood elevation requirements and a federal dune replenishment project helps make buying or building new on Long Beach Island a safe investment, officials and experts say.
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While many communities along the Jersey Shore have struggled to recover from the storm, the rise in activity holds promise in a vital area for the island, a tourist area with a large population of second homeowners, Mancini said.
"It means that the lost ratable base because of Sandy is recovering," he said. "We're very comfortable. We're very happy that things are moving forward."
Peter S. Reinhart, director of the Kislak Real Estate Institute at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, said the high demand for new homes also confirms that "Long Beach Island is still a special place along the entire East Coast."
"People want to get back there and re-create the feelings they had when they were kids when their parents took them and now going back on their own, so they're optimistic," he said. "People forget things quickly. If we'd had another storm last year it would've been tough, but Mother Nature was smiling on Long Beach Island."
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It also helps that mortgage interest rates have remained low.
"People who have always wanted to be part of the home ownership of LBI are taking the chance now; there's properties on the market that hadn't been on the market before," said Maggie O'Neill, an agent for the Mary Allen Realty. "Some people have said, 'OK, I'm done,' and the new regime is coming in. And a lot of people say, 'You know, it was a once-in-a-lifetime storm and we're going to roll the dice.'"
Dustin Racioppi: 732-643-4028; dracioppi@app.com