There are several nearby:


Friends of Van Vorst Park Farmers Market
Jersey Avenue & Montgomery Street, Jersey City
Directions: Van Vorst Park, Near Grove St. PATH Station
Phone: (201) 433-5127 - Friends of Van Vorst Park, Dr. Clifford Waldman
Open: June 16 - November 24, Saturdays, 8 am - 2 pm
Community Farmers Market: Variety of fruits and vegetables
Also Available: WIC and Senior FMNP checks accepted by some farmers


Hamilton Park Market
Hamilton Park - 8th Street & Jersey Avenue, Jersey City
Phone: (201) 388-4506 - Janet Allen
Open: June 13 - September 26, Wednesday, 2 pm - 7 pm
Community Farmers Market: Variety of fruits & vegetables
WIC & Senior FMNP accepted by some farmers


Harvest Square Farmers' Market
Bramhall & Grand St., Jersey City
Directions: St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church
Phone: (201) 432-2128 - Mary Elaine Connell
Open: July 17 - October 30, Tuesdays, 3 pm - 6 pm
Community Farmers Market: Variety of fruits and vegetables
Also Available: WIC and Senior FMNP checks accepted by some farmers


Hoboken Farmers' Market
Newark & Washington Streets, Hoboken
Directions: Two blocks West of the PATH Station
Phone: (201) 420-2277 - Dave Calamoneri
Open: June 26 - October 30, Tuesdays, 3 pm - 7:30 pm
Community Farmers Market: Variety of fruits and vegetables
Also Available: WIC and Senior FMNP checks accepted by some farmers


Journal Square Farmers' Market
Kennedy Blvd. at Journal Square, Jersey City
Directions: Directly off PATH Terminal
Phone: (201) 798-6055 - Collin Egan
Open: July 11 - November 21, Wednesdays, 11 am - 7 pm
Community Farmers Market: Variety of fruits & vegetables
Also Available: WIC and Senior FMNP checks accepted by some farmers

Paul Banks of Interpol, IIRC.

First I've heard of the Journal educating or enlightening anyone. I'm sure their grammatically incorrect headlines and rampant typographical errors do a great job of teaching effective use of English though.

Anyone who thinks the sub-prime disaster is 100% the fault of buyers is being willfully naive. There are plenty of unscrupulous brokers out there, concerned only about their fees and having no responsibility for what happens in the future, who feed people all kinds of lines "Don't worry about it" "We'll just put your income down as $60,000 - everyone does it" "You can just refinance later" etc. Yes, people should read everything they sign, and ideally people should know better than to trust such brokers, but it takes a high level of sophistication for a first-time buyer, especially someone of moderate income and education, to recognize all these traps.

I bolded that text because the guy's analysis is based on prices staying flat from 2006. But more foreclosures may push down prices, so the analysis starts from a flawed assumption.

The analysis also makes the impact on the housing market sound minimal by pointing out that the likely foreclosures represent 1% of outstanding mortgage loans. But most of those mortgage loans are on properties that won't be on the market any time soon at all, so you're looking at a much bigger statistic when compared with the number of homes that will actually be on the market - significant enough to bring prices down, I'd think.

Dr. Cagan analyzed 8.4 million adjustable-rate loans made during those three years and estimated that 13% of them, totaling $326 billion, will end in foreclosures. After lenders resell those properties, the total losses for lenders or investors holding the loans will be $113 billion, he estimated. That is about 1% of total U.S. home-mortgage loans outstanding.

"The vast majority of borrowers will be fine," Dr. Cagan said.

The estimates are based on an assumption that average home prices will remain about level with the December 2006 level over the next five years. If prices drop 10%, the number of foreclosures would jump to 1.9 million, Dr. Cagan projected. But a 10% rise in prices would cut foreclosures to 489,000, he estimated. When prices rise, people struggling with loan payments are more likely to be able to refinance into a loan with easier terms or sell their homes for more than the loan balance.

Uh, HELLOOOOOOO?!

"Supply/Demand" is kind of like "survival of the fittest" - it's circular reasoning that doesn't fully explain anything by itself. Things are because they are because they are, etc.

I'm talking about the things that impact demand - in this case sub-prime loans, speculation and unscrupulous mortgage practices.

What's the profit margin like on these new construction high rises? And if the market starts to suck, are they more likely to drop prices or just sit on their buildings and wait?

As much as I've been one of those people hoping for a price drop so I can buy in the next couple of years, I worry that the fallout from all this for our society and economy as a whole will be far worse than any benefit buyers like me could reap. I'd much rather live in a society where home prices grew at a reasonable rate and people were strongly encouraged to borrow only what they can afford to pay back, even if it meant not having some coming "opportunity" to buy property at a low price.

You wouldn't be saying that if he was telling you what you wanted to hear.

Look, I believe one should take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt, but this is a guy with quite a strong economics background.

If you'd like to cite some of these "credible financial journalists" who contradict what's being said here, go ahead.

Quote:

Even if you're right about Manhattan, Brooklyn/Queens/Jersey City are hardly the same thing as Manhattan. Downtown Jersey City is full of people who stretched hard to buy condos, and I'm sure some of them have crap mortgages.

Quote:

Uh, the author is most decidedly NOT a journalist.

"Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. His blog, Beat the Press , features commentary on economic reporting. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan."

Quote:

Condo flipping you mean? Absolutely. After all, you should only risk what you can afford to lose - and you can lose quite a lot doing that.

That should have said "1.1 million against 8 million"

Brings in a factor I hadn't thought about before - the sheer number of people who could wind up excluded from the homebuying market in relation to the total number of home sales. 1.1 million against 5 million is quite a lot. Granted, most of those excluded will be on the low end of the market, and some of you might argue that those people aren't buying in Manhattan or Jersey City. Still, I imagine it will have some impact. Jersey City certainly has its share of buyers who are stretching their finances to the max for that condo meal ticket.

One more perspective:

Safe Ground in a Housing Market Meltdown?
By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Wednesday 14 March 2007

As reports of problems in the mortgage market build, the number of people who view a collapse of the housing market as a serious possibility is growing rapidly. At the moment, the surge in defaults is taking place primarily in the sub-prime market, which is composed of borrowers who have poor credit histories. However, the problems are likely to affect the broader housing market and the economy as a whole before the end of the year.

The basic story in the sub-prime market is straightforward. Mortgage bankers were anxious to sell mortgages even when they knew that the borrowers could not make the payments, because they derive their income from selling the mortgage, not holding it. Hundreds of thousands of low- and moderate-income homebuyers were lured into buying homes by discounted "teaser" rates on mortgages. These teaser rates would reset to market rates, typically after three years, at which time many borrowers would be unable to make their monthly payments.

As long as house prices keep rising, everything works fine. Homeowners can always borrow against their equity to make their monthly payments, or they can sell their home, pay off the mortgage and pocket whatever gains they may have.

However, in 2006, supply finally outpaced demand, and home prices began falling. This led to a huge surge in defaults in the sub-prime market. As a result, some sub-prime lenders have gone bankrupt, and many others are leaving the business or radically curtailing their lending. The same thing is happening in the Alt-A market, which consists of borrowers with somewhat better credit ratings, but still below prime.

The housing optimists claim that the problems in the mortgage industry will be restricted to these sectors and will not spread to the larger prime market. However, the sub-prime and Alt-A markets together accounted for 40 percent of the market in 2005. If lending in these sectors is sharply curtailed, then a huge portion of potential homebuyers will be excluded from the market. According to an analysis from the Bear Stearns investment bank as many as 1.1 million potential homebuyers may be excluded from the market in 2007 because of tighter credit conditions.

While home sales did cross 8 million in 2005, as recently as 1995 the number of homes sold in a year was under 5 million. There is no way that 1.1 million potential buyers, or even half this number, can be excluded from the housing market without a substantial impact on house prices.

It is also important to remember that this credit tightening is occurring against a backdrop in which house prices are already falling. The median house price nationwide fell by more than three percent over the last year. On the supply side, the inventory of unsold homes is up by more than twenty percent from last year. In addition, a record high percentage of these homes are vacant. The vacancy rate of ownership units is more than forty percent higher than in any prior housing slump.

This describes a scenario of more downward pressure on prices, which will lead to more defaults and foreclosures. This in turn will lead to further tightening of credit and more homes being subject to distress sales through foreclosure.

All the experts who used to insist that this scenario could never happen are now insisting that the scenario does not describe the situation in their favored housing markets. While each local market does have its own dynamic, the run-up in housing prices was nationwide. Not everywhere is going to experience the same decline, but there will be few, if any, areas that escape unscathed. The fact that a particular metropolitan area has a sound economy with a healthy labor market should offer little solace - that doesn't mean that house prices are not overvalued.

The tech bubble in the stock market provides an appropriate analogy. While the largest overvaluations were in the tech sector and especially in the dotcoms, virtually all stocks had become overvalued. As a result, there were very few stocks that did not experience a sharp price decline from 2000-2002. The fact that a company had strong growth and solid profits didn't matter - overvalued stocks still fall when a stock bubble collapses. Similarly, overvalued houses will fall in price when the housing bubble collapses.

The vast majority of metropolitan areas are likely to see a fall in housing prices over the next few years, with the biggest declines likely occurring in the areas that had the largest run-ups (largely the two coasts). Few people will be insulated from the impact, just as very few stockholders were unaffected by the 2000-2002 crash. Don't let the happy-talk real estate peddlers tell you otherwise.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.

I have anecdotal evidence (from an RE agent aunt and in-laws who have looked at apartments in Manhattan both a couple of years ago and recently) that the market is not as hot as it was and that prices in some areas and some ranges have come down a little.

I never thought I'd be happy to see music industry people moving into my neighborhood, but they might bring a little more culture with them compared to the typical wall street types (no offense to typical wall street types - some of my best friends, etc. etc.)

New York City is one of the few places in the world that anyone in the world with enough money might want to have an apartment - that means Manhattan and MAYBE now a couple of places in Brooklyn. Much of the Manhattan market is driven not only by wall street employees with giant bonuses but by the superrich of the entire world. A recent NYTimes article detailed how many newer Manhattan luxury condo buildings are virtually empty most of the year in spite of being sold. They're essentially vacation homes.

Everything else remains merely a more affordable "alternative" and doesn't have the same cache. JC has considerably less cache than the trendier parts of Brooklyn and even Queens. We're certainly helped by the NYC market, but it's a bit absurd to suggest that JC will go as Manhattan goes.

By the way, no my rent hasn't gone up. In fact I'm probably paying something like half what I'd pay in mortgage and taxes on a similar apartment.

Google helps me answer my question, at least partially:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15128931/site/newsweek/

That's an interesting statement at the end -- I wonder if there's been any economic analysis though of what parts of the population are growing and whether those people are going to be homebuyers in the near future.

Maybe it's a publicity ploy by the dealer.

You can really see the damage that being dragged down the street did to it.

Oh wait, that's a different painting.

"Morrison said Equipado finally proceeded with the wedding after she insisted she wasn't changing phone carriers."

Best sentence of 2007 thus far.

Well, the police having a gun is no surprise, but I've never heard of them using of ecstasy in making an arrest.

Anyone want to take a pool on how much it finally sells for? I think he'll be LUCKY to get half what he's asking right now.

Exactly. What kind of person has $9 or even $6 million to spend and wants to live on Brunswick St.?

Think of what you could get on the waterfront for that kind of money -- heck, you could even afford a decent place in Manhattan.

In seriousness, btw, there are very good pro-development reasons to oppose ugly buildings, i.e. they make an area less desirable.

Besides, more "luxury" apartments flooding the market could just lead to lower prices for everyone. Who knows, maybe in a couple years I'll scoop up an "amenities" condo, that is, if these buildings are not rotting or collapsing by then.

Yeah, if it's where I think it is I don't actually care if it becomes a high rise - it's not like it'd be blocking any nice views or interrupting the continuity of an otherwise nice area.