New Jersey home prices rose 6% in a flat national market — the gap between job-rich and job-poor regions is now a housing divide

Home prices in New Jersey rose 5.9% year-over-year in February, the highest gain of any state, while the national average crawled up just 0.5%. The gap isn’t noise. It’s a signal: housing demand now follows job density, not climate, tax rates, or pandemic-era migration patterns. Newark, NJ, amplified the trend, posting a 6.7% year-over-year surge — the steepest among the 100 largest U.S. metro areas. Workers priced out of Manhattan are relocating across the river without taking pay cuts, drawn by New Jersey’s dense corridor of finance, fintech, pharmaceutical, and biotech employers. Cotality analysts identified this high-wage employment base as a structural driver insulating the state from the volatility battering Sun Belt markets. Thirteen states saw prices fall outright in February. Florida dropped more than 2%. Washington, DC, slid 3%. Montana nearly matched it. In New Jersey, inventory remains well below pre-pandemic levels, pushing nearly 40% of homes to sell above asking price last month. The affordability edge the state once held over New York is narrowing fast. And with mortgage rates rising again, demand may stall before it translates into closed sales. The U.S. no longer has one housing market. It has dozens — rebalancing locally, not correcting nationally.