Northern NJ Real Estate Weekly  |  Week of July 10, 2026

The Year Nothing Changed: Morris County's $1.2M–$1.5M Buyer Refuses the Headlines

Rates went up again this week for reasons that have nothing to do with Morris County. The data says the county's move-up buyer didn't notice.

Rate & Market Pulse

The 30-year fixed climbed again this week — Bankrate's daily read sits at 6.57%, while Freddie Mac's weekly survey put it at 6.49%, up from 6.43% the week before. The trigger isn't domestic: reports of the Middle East ceasefire unraveling have reignited oil-price and inflation worries, and mortgage rates followed. Nationally, the pressure is showing up as stagnation rather than correction — the median existing home price hit an all-time high of $440,600 in June per the National Association of Realtors, while inventory crept up just 1.3% year-over-year, growth NAR's chief economist called "miniscule." That's the national backdrop: higher rates, record prices, and a supply increase too small to matter. It's the kind of environment that should visibly rattle a five-to-seven-figure buyer pool. In Morris County's $1.2M–$1.5M tier, it hasn't.

Local Intelligence: The Numbers That Refused to Move

We pulled every Morris County single-family sale between $1M and $1.75M this year and lined it up against the same period in 2025. The headline is how little separates them. Two hundred fifty-seven homes have closed in this range so far in 2026, versus 245 at this point last year — a modest 4.9% increase, not a surge. The median sale-to-list ratio sits at 103.9%, essentially identical to last year's 103.7%. Seventy-eight percent of homes in this tier sold at or above asking price this year; 79.2% did last year. Median days on market: 15, in both years, to the day. The only meaningful shift is on the supply side, and it argues against a slowdown, not for one — 98 active listings against 146 homes currently under contract, meaning more of this tier is spoken for than is actually available to buy, at roughly 2.4 months of supply. Whatever the rate headlines are doing to sentiment elsewhere, buyers in this bracket are behaving exactly as they did a year ago: moving fast, paying at or above ask, and leaving very little sitting unsold. Randolph Township, home to this week's featured listing, tells the same story in miniature — 17 sales this year at a median of $1.275 million, against just six homes currently available to buy.

Deal of the Week: 10 Indian Trail Road, Randolph — $1,275,000

This week's listing is the local proof point for that median, almost to the dollar. It's a four-bedroom, 1981 colonial directly on Shongum Lake, two days on market, offered by Weichert Realtors. The home backs onto private, deeded lake rights — beach, clubhouse, boating, a swim team, and a dock-adjacent backyard built around a heated in-ground pool and hot tub. Inside, a granite eat-in kitchen, first-floor laundry, a loft converted into a home office, and a finished lower-level recreation room round out just over half an acre of lakefront lot. A whole-house generator and a 2014 primary bath renovation mean the mechanical and cosmetic updates a move-up buyer usually has to budget for are already done. At $1,275,000, it sits precisely at this year's Randolph median for the tier — not an outlier, but a clean example of what that number actually buys.

View the Full Listing →

The Bottom Line

Elevated rates are real, and the national data gives buyers every reason to hesitate. But Morris County's $1.2M–$1.5M buyer isn't waiting on a headline to tell them what's happening on the ground — the pace, the pricing, and the competition here look almost exactly like they did twelve months ago. If you're weighing a similar move in Bergen, Essex, or Union County, the same question applies: is your local data actually shifting, or just the noise around it? If you'd like the private feed for this tier, or want to know where your own home fits against this year's median, reach out any time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Source: GSMLS (Morris County single-family sales, $1M–$1.75M, YTD 2025 vs. YTD 2026), Bankrate, Freddie Mac, National Association of Realtors.