By Mike Lentz | The Mike Lentz Team – Keller Williams Realty
It has stopped slowing, which is not quite the same thing. Across all five counties, price growth cooled from about 10.6% in late 2024 to roughly 3% by spring 2026, and it has held near 3% for four straight months. The two-year slowdown is over. A clear upturn has not started here yet.
After more than a year of headlines predicting a home price crash, the latest national data shows that home price growth may be starting to pick back up.
Here is the thing most articles get wrong. The story is not whether prices are up or down. Prices have been up almost the whole time. The story is how fast they are rising, and whether that speed is increasing or decreasing. That is a harder number to find, so we built it from our own county market data going back to 2023.
The National Backdrop, In Short
For the past couple of years, home price growth has been moderating, cooling from around 7% in mid-2024, according to Redfin (see graph below). But look at the right side of that graph. The pace of that growth appears to have hit its low point and started to turn.
A couple months of data does not make a lasting trend, but there are other signs pointing the same direction. According to ResiClub and Zillow, about 36% of the 300 largest housing markets had falling prices as of the middle of last year. That share is now down to 23%. On average, experts project home prices will rise about 2.3% nationally this year.
That national average is a blend of hundreds of local markets, which is exactly why it is worth checking against your own. As Selma Hepp, Chief Economist at Cotality, explains:
“Local markets continue to tell very different stories. Annual home price growth has changed little since the start of the year, but some markets, especially those supported by strong job and income growth in the West and more affordable Midwest markets, have seen notable acceleration in price gains.”
What the Rate of Change Actually Looks Like Here
We ran the same calculation on our own market. The chart below combines Gloucester, Camden, Burlington, Salem, and Cumberland counties into a single South Jersey figure, weighting each county by how many homes actually closed there. Every rolling window covers between 3,000 and 4,700 sales.
The slowdown is unmistakable. Price growth ran about 10.6% in the fall of 2024 and came down almost every month for the next year and a half, reaching 2.9% by April 2026. That is the same cooling the national numbers describe, and it lasted about two years here.
What happened next is where South Jersey and the national story part ways. Our growth rate stopped falling, but it has not climbed. It has posted 2.9%, 3.0%, 3.1%, and 3.0% over the last four months. That is a floor, not a recovery.
Flattening Is Still Meaningful
A rate that stops falling is a real turning point even when it does not rise. For two years, every month brought a slightly weaker number than the month before, which is what made sellers nervous and gave buyers room to wait. That pattern has broken. Growth has been steady for a third of a year now.
One caution on reading the month-to-month bars. This measure is built on median sale prices, and a median moves whenever the mix of homes changes. A quiet month with a few large Mullica Hill or Moorestown colonials closing pushes the number up on its own. That is why the single-month readings bounce between 1.2% and 4.5% while the smoothed trend line barely moves. When you see a dramatic one-month swing in any market report, that is usually what you are looking at.
Where Each County Stands Today
The chart above blends the five counties together. This table pulls them back apart, because the regional average hides real differences. Gloucester County reflects July 2026 closed sales. The other four reflect June 2026, the most recent data released for those counties.
| County | Median Sale Price | Change vs. Last Year | Days on Market | Active Inventory | Sold Over List |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salem | $305,000 | +5.2% | 25 | 213 (+13.3%) | 44.9% |
| Burlington | $430,000 | +2.4% | 16 | 1,041 (+20.5%) | 48.4% |
| Camden | $375,000 | +1.4% | 14 | 986 (+22.7%) | 55.4% |
| Gloucester | $400,000 | +0.6% | 15 | 658 (+8.1%) | 48.9% |
| Cumberland | $272,000 | -1.1% | 30 | 413 (+32.6%) | 43.6% |
Salem County at +5.2% and Cumberland County at -1.1% are both real, and they are nearly seven points apart in the same region on the same month of data. That spread is the entire argument for ignoring national averages. It is also why a single month for a single county should never drive your decision on its own.
Salem County leads at $305,000, with 44.9% of homes selling above asking, up from 33.3% a year earlier. It is the most affordable county on the list, and towns like Woodstown and Carneys Point keep pulling buyers who got priced out further north. Cumberland County is the one place the median moved backward, with homes in Vineland and Millville taking 30 days to sell versus 22 a year ago.
One Thing Every County Has in Common
New listings are down across the board. Gloucester County is off 15.9%, Salem 23%, Burlington 28.9%, Cumberland 29.7%, and Camden 32.4%. Yet active inventory is up everywhere, from 8.1% in Gloucester to 32.6% in Cumberland.
Those two facts together explain the whole picture. Inventory here is not building because sellers are flooding the market. It is building because homes sit a few days longer than they used to. Pending sales are down in four of the five counties, which means a thinner pipeline heading into fall. That is a very different setup from a supply glut, and it is why the price declines showing up in some national markets have not shown up here.
What This Shift Means for Buyers and Sellers
If You’re Buying
Waiting is no longer free, but it is not expensive either. At the current 3% pace, sitting out another twelve months on a typical South Jersey home adds roughly $11,500 to the purchase price. That is real money, and it is a long way from the double-digit years when waiting cost you a down payment.
That said, you still have leverage you did not have in 2024. Inventory is up in all five counties, and the share of homes selling over asking has fallen in four of them. Understanding whether you are in a buyer’s or seller’s market helps you set expectations for how much negotiating room you actually have. First-time buyers should also look at NJHMFA down payment assistance, which stretches noticeably further in Salem and Cumberland counties.
If You Own a Home
You kept gaining equity through the entire slowdown. The regional growth rate never went negative, it just got progressively smaller. Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist at the National Association of Realtors (NAR), projects the typical homeowner will gain roughly $16,000 in housing wealth this year. Our local pace of about 3% is running modestly ahead of the 2.3% national forecast.
If you are thinking about selling, the setup is favorable. New listings are down in every county, so you face less competition than a year ago, and buyers in Camden, Gloucester, and Burlington counties are still committing in about two weeks. But with fewer homes going over asking, pricing your home correctly matters more now than it did in 2024, not less.
Bottom Line
Nationally, home price growth slowed for two years and is showing early signs of picking back up. In South Jersey, the slowdown was just as real and lasted just as long, but what followed it is a plateau rather than a rebound. Growth has sat near 3% since April.
Prices are not the story. The rate of change is, and here it has stopped falling without yet turning up. That is a better market for buyers than the national headline suggests, and a steadier one for sellers than the last two years felt. If you want to see what that looks like for your street rather than your county, schedule a quick call and we’ll walk through it together.
For the full picture in your county, see our market reports for Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland counties.
