Timing is everything ! Everything is timing !

Reuters is out with a new report on the state of real estate in Dubai. According to the report, prices in Dubai are expected to continue to decline. Here on the Jersey Shore in Cape May County, we are expecting prices to steady. Unlike many international markets we continue to have an influx of yearly vacationers to Sea Isle City and the Jersey Shore.

Buyers have been enjoying the benefits of the lower than normal interest rates are quietly buying up most of the low hanging real estate before next spring when the sellers seem to have some footing on the prices and have the benefit of the summer rental income wind at their backs.

My peers and I used to joke about having clients cruise down during snow storms with borrowed SUV’s to get a brand new property listing under contract before the weekend when herds of potential home owners would weigh down the Islands with cash filled pockets and deposit checks already written and signed before even seeing the house.

To put this in prospective this is the fall and winter season that buyers will be rambling down for the last of the distressed inventory. More of the available properties are priced to market than anytime in the past seven years.

Contact Ian or any well trained agents of The Lazarus Team, The Landis Co., Realtors, for market data that an engineer would cry for. We can explain the information so that your four old grandchild can grasp as long as he didnt just get off the boat from . . . . .

Get the point? We do easy, easy ! As my son Rami says “Relax and let use do the heavy lifting.” The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree I see.

For all of the reader who have been lulled to sleep over the past seven years and congratulating themselves in not getting caught purchasing a shore home at the top of the market for what ever reason. Don’t get to cocky because even the smart and very smart money are moving in.

Let us know what part of the buying process we can help. We are saving our clients thousands of dollars today!

For those who are interested we do have a Jersey Shore Foreclosure & Short Sale Email List Available.

From the beautiful beaches of the Jersey Shore to Florida , I serve discerning home buyers and sellers.

Sea Isle City, NJ – Outer Banks, NC – Corolla, NC – Greenville, NC – Fort Lauderdale, FL

The good news? Two key measures now suggest it’s an excellent time to buy a house, either to live in for the long term or for investment income (but not for a quick flip). First, the nation’s ratio of house prices to yearly rents is nearly restored to its prebubble average. Second, when mortgage rates are taken into consideration, houses are the most affordable they have been in decades.

Two of the silliest mantras during the real-estate bubble were that a house is the best investment you will ever make and that a renter “throws money down the drain.” Whether buying is a better deal than renting isn’t a stagnant fact but a changing condition that depends on the relationship between prices and rents, the cost of financing and other factors.

But the math is turning in buyers’ favor. Stock-oriented folks can think of a house’s price/rent ratio as akin to a stock’s price/earnings ratio, in that it compares the cost of an asset with the money the asset is capable of generating. For investors, a lower ratio suggests more income for the price. For prospective homeowners, a lower ratio makes owning more attractive than renting, all else equal.

Nationwide, the ratio of home prices to yearly rents is 11.3, down from 18.5 at the peak of the bubble, according to Moody’s Analytics. The average from 1989 to 2003 was about 10, so valuations aren’t quite back to normal.

But for most home buyers, mortgage rates are a key determinant of their total costs. Rates are so low now that houses in many markets look like bargains, even if price/rent ratios aren’t hitting new lows. The 30-year mortgage rate rose to 4.12% this week from a record low of 3.94% last week, Freddie Mac said Thursday. (The rates assume 0.8% in prepaid interest, or “points.”) The latest rate is still less than half the average since 1971.

As a result, house payments are more affordable than they have been in decades. The National Association of Realtors Housing Affordability Index hit 183.7 in August, near its record high in data going back to 1970. The index’s historic average is roughly 120. A reading of 100 would mean that a median-income family with a 20% down payment can afford a mortgage on a median-price home. So today’s buyers can afford handsome houses—but prudent ones might opt for moderate houses with skimpy payments.

For example, the median home in the greater Phoenix market, including houses, condos and co-ops, costs $121,700, according to Zillow.com. With a 20% down payment and a 4.12% mortgage rate, a buyer’s monthly payment would be about $470. Rent for a comparable house would be more than $1,100 a month, according to data provided by Zillow.com.

Of course, all of this assumes mortgages are available—no given now that lending standards have tightened. But long-term data on down payments and credit scores suggest conditions are more normal than many buyers think, according to Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow. “If you have good credit, a job and a down payment, you can get a mortgage,” Mr. Humphries says. “There’s more paperwork and scrutiny than five years ago, but things are pretty much like they were in the ’80s and ’90s.”

Not all housing markets are bargains. Mr. Humphries says Zillow has developed a new price/rent ratio that uses estimates for each individual property rather than city medians, to better reflect the choices facing typical buyers. A fresh look at the numbers suggests Detroit and Miami are plenty cheap for buyers, with price/rent ratios of 5.6 and 7.7, respectively. New York and San Francisco are more expensive, with ratios of 17.6 and 17.2, respectively. The median ratio for 169 markets is 10.7.

For investors seeking income, one back-of-the-envelope way of seeing how these numbers stack up against yields for other assets is to divide 1 by the price/rent ratio, resulting in a rent “yield.” The median market’s rent yield is 9.3% and Detroit’s is 17.9%.

Investors would then subtract for taxes, insurance, upkeep and other expenses—costs that vary widely. But suppose total costs were 4% of the purchase price. That would still leave a 5.3% rent yield in the typical market. With the 10-year Treasury yield at 2.2% and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index carrying a dividend yield of 2.1%, rents for residential housing in many markets look attractive.

A few caveats are in order. First, not all transactions are average ones. Even in low-priced markets, buyers should shop carefully. Second, prices could fall further. Celia Chen, a senior director at Moody’s Analytics, expects prices to drop 3% before bottoming early next year and rising slowly thereafter. “If the economy slips back into recession, however, we could easily see a 10% drop,” Ms. Chen says.

And property “flipping” can be dangerous even when prices are rising. That is because, absent a real-estate boom, house price gains simply aren’t that exciting. Research by Yale economist Robert Shiller suggests houses more or less track the rate of inflation over long time periods.

Houses aren’t the magic wealth creators they were made out to be during the bubble. But when prices are low, loans are cheap and plump investment yields are scarce, buyers should jump.

For The Inquirer

Heading to the Shore over an expressway isn’t for everyone. Some folks prefer the backroads.

But for the experienced trekker, writing down the names of the roads can be tricky. Notes can include phrases such as “past the car dealerships,” “that farm stand with the peaches,” “that graveyard” and “666.”

Jersey Shore backroads can be hard to pin down. Except for adventurous drivers wandering off the Atlantic City Expressway or Garden State Parkway’s standard routes with a map or GPS in hand, most Shore routes were handed down by parents and grandparents. They started their summer vacations before the Atlantic City Expressway opened in 1964, and ahead of the Garden State Parkway’s completion in 1957.

“I grew up with parents trying to figure out the back way to avoid part of the Garden State Parkway by going through, parallel, and over it,” says Kathryn Quigley, 44. Her family drove from Northeast Philadelphia to Stone Harbor along a route that included “the TAC” (i.e. the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge), a “restaurant with a triangle-shaped roof, and the bathrooms were out back.”

Now Quigley lives in Deptford, but she still takes the backroads, albeit of the Route 55 to Route 47 variety, with a few twists and turns.

“Why would I go down Atlantic City Expressway?” Quigley asked. “If I go to Atlantic City I do. From Deptford, it makes no sense to go that way,” she said.

Quigley starts by heading onto Route 55 south until it turns into Route 47. From there, she has two options: continue taking Route 47 or head on to Route 347, which leads back into Route 47. Quigley said that taking the Route 347 leg means less traffic. She then turns left onto Country Highway 657, which goes behind the Cape May County Zoo and eventually turns into Stone Harbor Boulevard, the main thoroughfare into Stone Harbor.

Barbara Hagin lives in San Francisco, but she grew up in New Jersey and visits her father, who lives in Wildwood Crest, every year. She flies into Philadelphia International Airport.

“I usually take the main roads, but from time to time I veer off the beaten path and take the smaller highways,” she says.

Two of her backroads are common and direct: Once she’s over the Walt Whitman Bridge into New Jersey, she takes the Black Horse Pike or White Horse Pike straight down to Atlantic City, avoiding the Atlantic City Expressway tolls, but “those aren’t very scenic, frankly,” she said.

They are also littered with stop lights, but it can be less traffic than the Atlantic City Expressway. From there, she can take Route 9 south.

The route she prefers, though, is like Quigley’s. She gets on Route 47 south, but she sticks to it instead of taking the Route 347 sidetrack.

My own backroads are a lot more winding but scenic.

If you take Route 42 south to the Atlantic City Expressway, you can continue on Route 42 by going straight instead of taking the expressway by veering left. After passing the line of Turnersville car dealerships, make a right into Country Road 610 and a left onto Tuckahoe Road. Stay on Tuckahoe (with a few name changes) until you reach Route 666. Yes, I said those creepy numbers. It splits from Tuckahoe to the right. It ends onto Route 49 – make that left, and then a right into Woodbine Road. Then turn left onto Dehirsh Avenue, right onto Kings Highway. That will lead you onto Route 9, which parallels the Garden State Parkway.

Wrangling the knowledge of Jersey Shore backroads out of people can be like Fight Club: First rule is there are no backroads because they, too, can get clogged. On part of Quigley’s route, local residents will sell sodas and candy bars to people stuck at traffic lights.

I haven’t had that problem. Maybe it’s because people are scared of traveling on Route 666.

Either way, it’s a lot better than being stuck on an expressway that turns into a parking lot.

Properties on the 4100 block of Asbury Avenue in Ocean City are being offered for rental. Real estate agents and brokers say more winter rentals are available as the number of renters has stayed the same.

By STEVEN LEMONGELLO Press of A.C.Staff Writer | Sun, November 21, 2010

As the weather gets colder and the summer visitors pack up and leave, they leave behind hundreds of empty apartments and houses in shore towns — but while the number of “winter renters” has stayed steady, the number of available units has only grown.

“It has changed,” D.J. Gluck, the broker/owner of Soleil Sotheby’s International Realty in Margate, said of the market for winter rentals, “and it’s changed for economic reasons.”

A large number of summer rentals went unrented during the summer season, Gluck said, and now Absecon Island is seeing a “huge” number of winter rentals on the market.

“That’s because there’s more landlords and more new construction of houses that didn’t sell,” Gluck said. “There’s (just) more people willing to do winter rentals.”

“They’re under the gun,” said Ken Marshall, of Grace Realty in Ocean City, about why more owners are willing to rent their properties. “Everybody is.”

Typically, Gluck said, only 20 percent of units on the market as winter rentals actually get rented — “And maybe it’s actually close to 10 percent,” he added.

In all four communities on Absecon Island, Gluck said, there were 502 active rentals as of early November, including year-round, winter rentals and seasonal rentals. He estimates that only about 300 are currently being rented.

There’s also a disparity among the towns. Gluck said that there are 161 rentals in Margate alone, while Jerome DiPentino, of Premier Properties, said that there were fewer than 10 in Longport.

“Winter rentals are also a little tricky,” Gluck said, “because there’s a lot of landlords with very nice, expensive houses, who are very particular about who would move into (their house).”

The ideal, low-occupancy tenant, he said, is a person “who is really going to take care of a place — and they’re challenging to find. … If you run into a good winter rental tenant, you can get a good deal.”

Gluck recently rented out a second home, assessed at about $650,000, to a tenant paying about $900 a month over a seven-month period.

“That’s going to generate more than $6,000, and the landlord was thrilled to offset taxes and homeowner’s insurance. They were very, very concerned about the quality of the tenant.”

Claire Cotney, a broker at Marketplace Realty in Margate, said that there’s always been more inventory than people interested in renting — but the lack of new construction also leads to fewer renters.

“There are not that many people coming in to work this year (on construction projects),” Cotney said. “When there’s new construction, you certainly have a lot more winter renters.”

Other winter renters, said Re/Max broker/owner Linda Novelli, do so because they’re renovating a house and need a place to stay in the meantime.

“Taking a winter rental also gives them the gift of time,” Novelli said. “They can keep it a few years while they look for an apartment or buy a home.”

Marshall, whose company handles many properties in the south end of Ocean City, said availability is down overall.

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and when I started there were a lot of winter rentals,” Marshall said. “I even started out living in a winter rental myself. But today, they’re few and far between. It’s a hassle getting renters for the summer when you have a winter tenant sitting there.”

Of course, they’re still a good deal for everyone if it works out. In fact, the offices of Grace Realty have apartments above them, he said, “and one of them has a winter renter.”

Beachgoers relax Friday in Surf City near Fifth Street. Photo by: Bill Gross

By ROB SPAHR Press of A.C. Staff Writer | Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The sound of hammers and the sight of heavy machinery are reminders that southern New Jersey beaches were battered by a heavy winter storm season and that a race is on to have them all ready for Memorial Day weekend.

Sections of beaches in four towns in Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean counties have all been washed away and are unusable. Repair work could take until the end of June in some cases. Shore town officials are stressing that there will be sand for the tourists to lie on, although they may not have as much territory as they’re accustomed to; many beaches are shorter at high tide than last summer.

Beach fills are scheduled to start today in Cape May County’s Avalon and Sea Isle City for a $10.4 million project set to conclude by June 30. To meet the deadline following delays, Illinois-based Great Lakes Dredge & Dock doubled its efforts and is bringing in two dredges to pump 1.2 million cubic yards of sand in both towns.

In Avalon, work was scheduled to start this weekend, but fog and high surf slowed the dredge’s arrival, Avalon spokesman Scott Wahl said.

The towns have had to close off beaches in some damaged areas — in southern Sea Isle City and northern Avalon — because erosion took too much sand, in some cases exposing rock underneath.

“They’ll remain blocked off until we get a beach,” Wahl said.

Elsewhere in Avalon and Sea Isle City, the beaches are significantly wider.

In Ocean City, a recently completed beach fill stocked beaches.

Meanwhile on Long Beach Island, Surf City crews are still rebuilding the roughly 10 beach access ways that were eroded over the winter and are dealing with other minor erosion issues on the northern end of town, City Clerk Mary Madonna said.“I don’t think that the winter was nice to any Jersey shore communities,” Madonna said. “But the beaches are our livelihood, so we know what we’re dealing with and what we have to do. ”

The inclement winter caused a delay in Harvey Cedars’ beach-replenishment project, which was initially slated for completion in early spring. Now the project will not finish until mid-June, Borough Clerk Daina Dale said, causing a few beaches on the southern end of town — near Bergen Avenue — to remain closed until that time.

Larry Silvi’s family has owned their beachfront home on Bergen Avenue in Harvey Cedars for decades. The house was designed so all the bedrooms in the house have views of the ocean, but Silvi said the first floor views are now gone because of the high dunes that were built as part of the beach replenishment project. And with the beach in front of the house closed until June, the Silvis and their guests must find other beaches to go to.

But they are finding ways to make it work.

“It’s our first weekend down here, so it’s just nice to get out on the beach at all,” said Silvi, 21, of Newtown, Pa. “We have to crawl through neighbors’ backyards to get to the beach now, but we’re making do. And I guess it will be all worth it in the long run, because we’ll have a nice big beach out there.”

Atlantic City’s beaches suffered what city Emergency Management Coordinator Tom Foley said was “tremendous erosion” — but, he said, the Department of Public Works was assisted by nature in getting the beaches back into shape.

“The spring tides actually brought in some sand,” Foley said of the beaches. “They’re not in as great a shape as we’d have hoped to have seen them in, but they’re in good shape, and the public works department has done a great job getting them in shape.”

Only the beach between New Jersey and States avenues, he said, was in poor enough condition to be closed. A major beach-replenishment project isn’t scheduled until fall 2011.

Margate’s Public Works Department has been working since March clearing debris off the beach, leveling it off and clearing weeds from bulkheads, Assistant Superintendent of Public Works Franz Adler said.

And former Margate resident Lou Nirenberg said the city’s always done a good job.

“I’d see them come down with the bulldozers every year,” said Nirenberg, now of Northfield. “This is their bread-and-butter. They make sure it’s taken care of.”

Adler also said that new stairs have been built at several beach entrances, which resident Amy Jensen said included Osborne and Pembroke avenues — “And it’s more teak wood, the ones that don’t rot as much.”

In Brigantine, fixing up the beaches is “an ongoing battle,” Public Works head Ernie Purdy said. “We rake it every day with a loader, and the lifeguard equipment is being put up as we speak.”

Barnegat Township residents Megan Royle and Brittany Karp spent Friday morning on Ship Bottom’s Seventh Street beach.

“We come here all the time, but we were just saying how the beaches look nicer this year for some reason,” said Royle, 20.

“It just looks and feels nicer, like the beaches are cleaner, and the water is clearer,” said Karp, 19.

Staff writers Steve Lemongello and Brian Ianieri contributed to this report.

A rent sign is planted in front of an Ocean City home on Asbury Avenue. Renting out a second home can be problematic when tax time rolls around.

By KEVIN POST Press of A.C. Business Editor | Sunday, March 28, 2010

A rent sign is planted in front of an Ocean City home on Asbury Avenue. Renting out a second home can be problematic when tax time rolls around.

Second homes offer tax opportunities to their owners but pose risks and challenges, experts say, especially at the shore in southern New Jersey.

Much depends on whether the home is rented out and, if so, how that rental use compares to personal use of the home.

Joe Mento, who has been helping second-home owners with their taxes for more than 50 years at Cape Bookkeeping & Tax Center in Cape May, said renting the home for more than 14 days a year triggers an Internal Revenue Service requirement to declare the income on Schedule E.

“If you’re renting the home out on a part-time basis, that’s a hot spot with the IRS,” Mento said. “Some people rent it and don’t report the income, but they should be aware the IRS is scrutinizing that more carefully.”

The biggest single deduction second-home owners can take — mortgage interest payments — also comes with a catch not known to some owners, he said.

“The total mortgage amount allowed on both the primary residence and the second home is $1 million,” Mento said, “which in this area is not that hard to get past.”

Tom Morrissey, a certified public accountant in the Forked River section of Lacey Township, said those who rent their second home out all year long can generally write off all the expenses related to it.

But if their personal use of the home exceeds the greater of 14 days or 10 percent of the days rented, then the allocation of expenses becomes more complex, with the direct and indirect expenses listed separately.

“That’s why people keep track of their personal time,” Morrissey said. “If they exceed the limit, then they must file Schedules A and E, and generally they don’t allow a loss for mixed use.”

“People are pretty conscious of how much personal use they have vs. renting because they want to write it all off,” he said.

That’s especially true at the shore compared to other second-home locations such as the Poconos in Pennsylvania, he said.

“I have clients elsewhere and they’ll use the home and they’re not as concerned about it, probably because the operating costs are so much less away from the Jersey Shore,” Morrissey said.

When figuring personal use, he said, not only use by the owner/taxpayer counts, but also by family members and anyone who has an interest in the property.

The exception is if a family member uses the house as his or her primary residence and a fair rental value is paid to do so, he said.

Rules governing tax treatment of second homes have gotten tighter over the years, said Christine Karpinski, author of “How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner.”

“There are some pretty strict guidelines with regard to second homes because back in the 1980s a lot of people bought them and used them as tax shelters,” Karpinski said.

If you have proof, though, there are “a lot of really good deductions you can take,” she said.

One many aren’t aware of is travel expenses for trips to theproperty to work on it, she said. Another are the expenses for a home office used to run your vacation rental business.

“I recommend that owners sign their own guestbook and keep a record of what they’ve done in the guestbook,” Karpinski said. “First, it tells the renters that you are active and the things you’ve done. Then, for tax purposes, besides receipts, you have signed the book between renters proving you were there.”

She suggests considering many other possible deductions:

• property taxes;
• property, flood and liability insurance;
• utility bills (including TV and Internet);
• housekeeping expenses;
• supplies;
• and even meals while on maintenance trips to the house.

Bigger expenses such as improvements, furnishings and equipment needed may be amortized or depreciated, she said.

All of this may be a bit too challenging for some second-home owners.

“I think some can handle the tax return themselves, but you’re always advised to get professional help,” Mento said.

With an industry analysis of New Jersey tourism trends

Deborah Seamon, of Quakertown, Pa., went into the office of Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors on Friday looking for her first summer vacation rental in Ocean City. Her grandmother owned a house in town, and the family had stayed there for many summers, but the home was recently sold. So now she’s looking for a place where eight people can stay for a week.

“Price is definitely playing a factor,” Seamon said.

Seamon’s arrival was a hopeful sign for shore Realtors. The shore summer rental market was hurt last year by the struggling economy and record-breaking rainfall that soaked the region. Last year’s poor season followed a 1.6 percent drop in tourism expenditures in 2008, according to an analysis of tourism trends done by IHS Global Insight, an economic consultant for the state.

But this year, shore real estate agents say early signs show the market is rebounding. Renters are still being more conservative with their vacation plans than they were before the economy declined, but agents in the region report an increase in bookings over last year.

“We’ve had the phones ringing off the hook when you get a nice day,” Prudential rental manager Mary Louise Bowdler said Friday. “We expect a busy weekend.”

Bowdler said last summer’s poor results haven’t led owners to lower rents, but most have not raised the rents for a few years.

John LaRosa, who has owned Down The Shore Realty in Ocean City for about five years, has noticed an upswing in rentals.

“The dropoff in 2009 was probably due to people’s apprehension because of the economy, and they chose to err on the side of caution,” LaRosa said. “But this year, they’re back because they’re probably tired of being pent-up and want to get back to the shore,” he said. “They have cabin fever, and they’re looking to rent.”

The rentals have economic effects. Diane Wieland, the director of tourism for Cape May County, estimated that the county’s rental industry brought in $1.6 billion dollars in 2008. Overnight lodging, in hotels and motels, brought in another $2.7 billion, she said.

The cost of summer rentals varies widely town by town and by the size of the rental unit. A review of units in area shore towns being advertised online showed that weeklong rentals could be found for as low as $500 in Wildwood Crest and $700 to $800 in Ventnor. A number of three-bedroom units were available in Ocean City in the range of $1,200 to $3,000 per week. And in Harvey Cedars, on Long Beach Island, rental properties were advertised for $2,500 to $5,000 per week.

Cape May County seasonal rentals account for half of the state’s seasonal rental income, according to economic consultants IHS Global Insight. And Wieland said when people stop renting, it hurts more than just landlords.

“It has a snowball effect, because there are fewer people out at the restaurants, at various attractions, at retail locations,” she said. “It also impacts our transportation industry, because they are not buying gas.”

Atlantic and Ocean counties also suffer when there is a drop in summer rentals. Those counties generated more than $292 million and $880 million in rental income, respectively, in 2008, according to the Global Insight report.

The numbers for just exactly how bad 2009 was will not be available until next month, Wieland said. But things are already better this year.

Nick Savopoulos fell in love with the New Jersey shore and wanted a getaway of his own here. The semiretired attorney, 64, of Port Washington, Pa., eventually bought a property in Margate, but had to rent it out when he wasn’t using it in order to afford it. Eventually, that one property became three.

But with the drop in summer rentals over the past couple of years, Savopoulos had to sell off one of his properties to pay bills. This year, however, interest in his rental properties has picked up.

“I think everybody had cabin fever through the winter. And now that it’s nice, they’re thinking ahead to summer,” Savopoulos said. “When it was really rainy last weekend, I think I got one call. But since it is supposed to be nice this weekend, I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people who want to come see the place.”

Patricia Shultis has been an agent for 11 years at Prudential Zack Shore Properties in Ship Bottom, where the summer tourist season is key to Long Beach Island’s economy.

“Usually the rentals always do very well here, but last year it dive-bombed for a lot of Realtors,” she said. “It was very slow.

“It’s been popping lately,” Shultis said. “People are definitely out and about, and looking forward to the summer.”

Officials from both the Southern Ocean County and Cape May chambers of commerce say the results they’ve seen so far are encouraging, but they’re still worried.

“The trend we’re seeing is that the off-season weeks during the shoulder (spring and fall) seasons are filling up faster than normal,” Shultis said.

The four busiest — and most expensive — weeks for summer rentals, Shultis said, are typically the last two weeks in July and the first two weeks in August.

“Those weeks are very light this year,” she said. “People still want to come to the shore, and they want to stay in certain houses. They just want to do it for cheaper.”

While many real estate agents reported a drop in summer rentals last year, Monica Eafrati — a sales associate with Weichert Realtors Brigantine Realty — said summer rentals in Brigantine have been on a steady rise for several years and 2009 was no different.

“It was almost like, for the longest time, people didn’t know we were here,” said Eafrati, who attributed Brigantine’s rise in popularity to its low costs and the construction of the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector. “Now, we’re getting buyers coming here instead of the more expensive places (they went before).”

Eafrati said she’s seeing families save money this year by renting in larger groups.

“We’re seeing a lot of larger rentals going, and they’re being booked by groups … coming with three or four families at a time,” she said. “Many of them want a specific house or want to come during a specific time, but want to do it for cheaper.”

Jersey Shore Summer Rentals

A rental sign hangs on a beachfront house on Wesley Avenue in Ocean City. Paul Leiser says Internet browsing has reduced the negative effect snow damage might have on a property’s attractiveness to renters, but say beach erosion due to snow can drive them away. Photo by: Dale Gerhard

By BEN LEACH Press of A.C. Staff Writer | Sunday, February 21, 2010

As most of the region spent the past few weeks digging out of more than 2 feet of snow, some people imagined the summer months and a nice, warm, and snowflake-free beach season mere months away.

But as the snow eventually melts and washes away, so could the sand that makes living at and visiting shore resorts so desirable in the first place.

When people start making their vacation plans for the summer of 2010, the amount of sand left on the coast could make a big difference in where people want to spend their time and their money.

“People are going to go to an area where there is a beach,” said Steve Booth, a manager for Prudential Fox and Roach Realty in Ocean City.

According to an analysis by New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, Ocean City lost about a foot of sand at the northern end, where a beach replenishiment project has been under way for a few weeks.

Those routine beach-replenishment projects are what puts visitors’ minds at ease, Booth said.

“(Visitors) are fairly confident that by the summer everything will be fine,” Booth said.

However, Booth said residents who like to be close to the beach are not above taking their business somewhere else if the beach immediately in front of their rental property isn’t there or doesn’t meet their standards.

“If people don’t like the beach where they’re staying, they’re not going to go to another town. They’re going to check out places a few blocks away,” he said. But to a real estate agent, that can be too far. “The rental business tends to be territorial.”

Even though visitors to a shore resort can make a last-minute decision, many of them like to plan well in advance.

Presidents Day weekend is a particularly busy time for booking rental units for the summer, said Paul Leiser, co-owner of the Avalon Real Estate Agency on Dune Drive in the borough of Avalon.

“Twenty five years ago, they would be lined up waiting for us to unlock the doors,” Leiser said. “By 5 or 5:30, we’d be wiped out.”

Leiser said that at the time, a visit could be affected by ice on the steps or the appearance of the beach. But times have changed, and so have the ways in which people seek out rental properties.

According to Leiser, about

70 percent of all summer rentals through his agency are researched online. For some visitors, virtual tours are sufficent when making their summer real estate decisions.

Even in the hardest-hit areas, such as Long Beach Island, where the DEP’s analysis found 2 to 3 feet of erosion along places such as Beach Haven Crest and Harvey Cedars, a history of beach erosion doesn’t necessarily deter renters.

“(Erosion) is not affecting rental prices,” said Eileen Matson, a broker associate for Century 21 Mary Allen Realty Inc. in Ship Bottom.

Matson, who has been in real estate on Long Beach Island for 25 years, said erosion has never affected rental prices in her territory.

As long as people want to rent beachfront properties over the summer, Matson said, the prices will remain steady. And so far in 2010, that demand doesn’t seem to be dropping off at all.

“We’re actually seeing a rise in business this year compared to last year,” Matson said.