Warren housing has gone flat by the square foot, and volume is the real story
The Warren Housing Index sits at 219.7, up six tenths of a percent from a year ago. That is the smallest twelve month move since 2020. Underneath it, closings are down about 10 percent.
Home values in Warren Township, New Jersey have flattened on a per square foot basis. The Warren Housing Index reads 219.7 for the twelve months ending August 16, 2026, against 218.4 a year earlier, a gain of 0.6 percent. Median sale price rose 5.4 percent to $1,180,000 year to date, but median price per square foot fell 1.6 percent to $401.35. The gap is a mix effect, not appreciation. Closings fell from 186 to 167 over the same twelve months.
For five straight years, the answer to what a square foot of Warren Township costs has been "more than last year." That run has stopped.
The Warren Housing Index, which tracks the median closed price per square foot of living area against a year 2000 base of 100, stands at 219.7 on a trailing twelve month basis through August 16. A year ago the same measure read 218.4. That is a gain of six tenths of one percent over twelve months.
For comparison, the twelve months ending August 2025 read 218.4 against 206.5 for the twelve months ending August 2024, a gain of 5.8 percent. The current year has delivered roughly one tenth of that.
Volume fell while price stood still
The index barely moved. The number of transactions behind it did not.
One hundred sixty seven homes closed in Warren in the twelve months ending August 16, against 186 in the twelve months before. That is a decline of roughly 10 percent.
Year to date the pattern is the same but milder. Ninety three homes have closed between January 1 and August 16 this year, against 106 in the same window last year and 128 in 2023.
The apples to apples table
Comparing a partial year against a full year overstates or understates almost everything. The table below holds the window fixed at January 1 through August 16 for every year, so each row covers the same 228 days.
| Year | Closings | Median price | Median $/sf | Median DOM | Sale to list | Share over ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 106 | $714,500 | $236.12 | 41 | 96.3% | 12.3% |
| 2021 | 179 | $835,000 | $287.50 | 21 | 99.4% | 39.7% |
| 2022 | 136 | $965,000 | $309.50 | 17 | 100.5% | 47.1% |
| 2023 | 128 | $969,000 | $345.03 | 19 | 100.2% | 46.9% |
| 2024 | 103 | $1,127,000 | $386.90 | 24 | 100.8% | 46.6% |
| 2025 | 106 | $1,120,000 | $407.96 | 21 | 100.4% | 38.7% |
| 2026 | 93 | $1,180,000 | $401.35 | 22 | 101.1% | 40.9% |
Two lines in that table point in opposite directions, and the gap between them is the whole point.
Median sale price is up 5.4 percent year over year, from $1,120,000 to $1,180,000. Median price per square foot is down 1.6 percent, from $407.96 to $401.35.
Both numbers are correct. They disagree because the mix of what sold changed. When larger houses make up a bigger share of a thin year, the median price climbs even if no individual house appreciated. Price per square foot strips most of that out, which is why the index is built on it.
Competition did not soften
The easy reading of falling volume is that demand cooled. The execution numbers do not support that.
The average Warren sale closed at 101.1 percent of its last asking price this year, the highest figure in the seven year window above. Sales at or above the final ask made up 40.9 percent of closings, up from 38.7 percent last year. Median days on market held at 22, essentially unchanged from 21.
That is not the signature of buyers walking away. It is the signature of fewer houses reaching the market and the ones that do getting picked over quickly.
What is standing on the market right now
Forty five active listings against 93 closings in 228 days works out to roughly three and a half months of supply at the current pace. Of those 45 active listings, four have taken a price reduction from their original ask. Median days on market for the active set is 7, which reflects how recently most of this inventory arrived rather than how fast it is moving.
Only five properties have come to market in the last fourteen days. August is seasonally the quietest listing stretch of the year in Warren, so that is not a surprise on its own, but it does mean the fall inventory picture will be set by what gets listed between now and the end of September.
A note on what these numbers can and cannot tell you
The index measures closings, which reflect contracts signed 30 to 90 days earlier. It is a record of the recent past, not a reading of today and not a projection of tomorrow.
Data coverage is also uneven. The living area figure behind the index comes from the county parcel record where a match exists and from the MLS approximate square footage where it does not. For 2026 closings, that combined coverage is 56 percent, well below the 92 percent typical of 2022 through 2024. The parcel join for the current year is thinner than usual because recent transactions have not yet been fully reconciled against tax records. The 2026 index point should be treated as provisional and will be revised as those records catch up.
Full methodology, the complete series back to 2000, and the construction rules are published on the Warren Housing Index page.
These figures cover every residential property type in the MLS, including townhouses and condominiums, not detached houses alone. Attached product sells below detached in Warren, so a detached only median would run higher.
An earlier version of this post overstated the twelve month decline in closings as 30 percent, from 169 to 119, because of a data processing error that dropped part of the sold record. The correct figures are 186 closings falling to 167, a decline of about 10 percent. The index values were not affected. The text above has been corrected.
- Garden State MLS closed sales, Warren Township (Somerset County), queried via BigQuery view v_gsmls_enriched on August 16, 2026
- Warren Housing Index methodology and full series. https://johnmangini.com/warren-07059/warren-housing-index
