The small houses might be the big opportunity
Across two years of recorded Belmar single-family sales, the smallest houses traded at a steep premium per square foot to the largest — buyers appear to be paying a land-and-location floor at the small end.
Briarwood Research is the firm’s independent research function. Its methodology informs our acquisitions, advisory work and the technology developed inside Scout — and it publishes what it finds. Eight Monmouth County towns, updated through August 31, 2026. Free to read, sourced throughout.
Market Index
Weekly supply scores for every town we cover, in plain English.
Updated Jul 27 →Town Views
One standing page per town: pricing, liquidity, supply, and what changed.
5 published →Research Notes
Short reads on one finding — a cohort, a spread, a pattern worth naming.
Browse notes →Flagship Reports
Full-market reviews. Thesis and charts first, appendices behind them.
Midyear 2026 →Methodology
How each signal is built, what it can and cannot support, and how it is reviewed.
Read →Every score says what it means.
Each town gets a supply score from 0 to 100 — higher means fewer homes available relative to the town's housing base. Every score says what it means and how confident we are in it.
The Market Index is not available right now. Nothing is being estimated in its place — the scores return when the published record does.
Thesis first. Appendices behind it.
A long report should lead with what it found, not with how it was made. Method and limitations stay published in full — they move below the finding rather than in front of it.
The mix shifted before the prices did.
Belmar's trailing-year median sits close to the prior window, which on its own reads like a market going nowhere. Per-square-foot pricing tells a different story: it rose, while the median home that traded got materially smaller. What changed is what sold, not what it costs.
- 1Median sale price is $1,132,500 over the trailing twelve months, up about 3% from $1,100,000 in the prior-year window.
- 2Median price per square foot rose to $668 from $623 — up about 7%. Per-foot pricing did not follow the headline.
- 3The median traded home shrank to 1,563 square feet from 1,792 — down about 13%. Smaller homes made up more of what sold.
Appendix AData sources and coverage
- Briarwood SOLD comp record for Belmar: 337 sales through June 24, 2026, drawn from NJ SR1A public records and ATTOM.
- Trailing-12-month window June 24, 2025 → June 24, 2026: 134 sales (85 in the prior-year window).
- Active-market read from the approved curated aggregate, as of July 14, 2026.
Appendix BMethod and adjustments
- Price per square foot is computed over 116 eligibility-screened comparables; nominal-deed transfers and outlier rows are excluded.
- Medians are taken over trailing twelve months rather than a calendar period, so the comparison window is the same length on both sides.
- Every figure is traceable to the recorded sale behind it.
Appendix CLimitations and what this cannot tell you
- This is a town-and-segment aggregate, not a property-level valuation. It cannot tell you what any individual house is worth.
- The trailing-year median reflects a change in what traded (1,563 versus 1,792 square feet median size) more than a change in price per foot. Read the median and $/sqft together.
- The active-listing history is a short run of recent snapshots — enough to show the current level, not enough to describe a recurring within-year pattern or a prior-year inventory comparison.
- Index reads are point-in-time. This review does not assert an index trend.
Appendix DFull comparable tables
The comparable set behind these figures is published with the full review, including the per-sale rows the medians are computed over. Open the full report →
One standing page per town.
Each view carries the same figures on the same dates, so towns can be compared without re-reading a report. Published once the recorded sales support it.
5 of 5 towns carry a published standing view. The rest are under index coverage; their views publish once the recorded sales support the same figures.
The median dipped, but the town didn't get cheaper.
Reading the median and $/sqft together — what sold, not what a foot costs.
Belmar 2026 Market Review · Belmar · Sales through August 31, 2026Availability, not price, is the binding constraint.
Tracking Belmar's single-family supply tightness against the town baseline.
Belmar Scarcity Monitor · Belmar · Sales through August 31, 2026The smallest houses command the highest price per square foot.
Why smaller Belmar homes carry an outsized per-foot premium.
Belmar's Small-Home Optionality · Belmar · 2026
Three signals.
Liquidity
How readily homes are actually trading — how many close, how fast, and against how much standing inventory.
How it is calculated +How it is calculated −
Scores market liquidity from closed-sales velocity, active inventory, and median days on market. Higher scores indicate cleaner transaction depth, not a recommendation to buy or sell.
Supply
How much is available to buy relative to the size of the town's housing stock. Higher means less choice.
How it is calculated +How it is calculated −
Scores structural scarcity from active inventory relative to the housing base. Higher scores indicate tighter observable supply, limited by data coverage.
Affordability strain
How much of a typical local income the mortgage on a typical local home would consume. Higher means more strain.
How it is calculated +How it is calculated −
Scores household affordability stress as the share of median household income consumed by the median home's mortgage P&I (80% LTV, 30-yr, on a mortgage-rate assumption), scaled so 20% of income reads 0 and 100% reads 100. Higher means more stress, not a forecast of price movement.
All three are reviewed by a person before release, and each carries a confidence status based on how much history exists.