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While the rest of the country grapples with a stalled housing market and high interest rates, New Jersey has emerged as the nation’s top leader in home price growth.

Driven by high-wage jobs and a Manhattan exodus, the state is outpacing the national average and outperforming former COVID-era hotspots like Florida.

According to a recent report from Cotality, the Garden State isn’t just growing; it’s outpacing the field by a wide margin, with home prices climbing nearly 6% in February from the previous year. The U.S. national average growth during that same period was just 0.5%.

A NEW ECONOMIC IRON CURTAIN IS FALLING ACROSS AMERICA AS TRILLIONS IN WEALTH FLEE TO THE ‘BOOM BELT’

More specifically, Newark recorded a 6.7% year-over-year price jump, marking the steepest hike among the 100 largest metros in the U.S.

Newark’s skyline reflects on the banks of the Passaic River at night. (Getty Images)

Housing supply in New Jersey remains well below pre-pandemic levels, with nearly 40% of homes being sold above asking prices.

“These diverse trends indicate an ongoing process of price discovery — one where sales and comparisons remain limited — and underscore a market that is rebalancing locally rather than correcting nationally,” Cotality chief economist Selma Hepp said in the report.

“Although the steady decrease in mortgage rates prior to the spring homebuying season raised hopes for a rebound in home prices and sales in 2026, the recent surge in rates has reduced demand in the housing market,” she added, “shifting expectations for a broader recovery this year.”

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The New Jersey boom can be linked to workers getting priced out of New York City who are choosing its neighboring state to avoid sacrificing their full paychecks while maintaining transit access. Many of these new commuters are in the finance, pharmaceutical or biotechnology sectors.

Going south to the Sun Belt and the Western frontier, Cotality data also indicates that formerly red-hot markets are starting to see corrections: Florida dropped more than 2% in price, Washington, D.C. and Montana saw similar declines of around 3% and a total of 13 states recorded outright price declines in February.

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The war has reduced the passage of tankers through the strait to a trickle. Only 15 vessels have made the trip since Tuesday, compared to an average of almost 140 each day prior to the outbreak of the conflict, carrying a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies. Almost 800 ships have been left stranded in the Gulf, most of them loaded with cargo.

The team at Spectrum Technologies will watch the conclusion of the Artemis II mission this weekend knowing they played an important role

A laser company in South Wales played an important role in the Artemis II space mission after their advanced technology was used on the Orion spacecraft. Spectrum Technologies in Bridgend design and manufacture laser equipment which is used by teams in America to label the wiring on spacecrafts and aircrafts, including Orion.

There is 20 miles of wiring on Orion, made up of 2,600 individual pieces which have all been marked by Spectrum Technologies’ lasers.

“Each wire must be marked along its entire length at intervals of just a few inches with a unique alphanumeric code,” said Peter Dickinson, chairman and chief technology officer.. It’s extremely complex electrical wiring,” he said. “They all have to be identified with a unique code otherwise it is a gigantic mess”.

READ MORE: BCRS Business Loans secures £20m mandate to back small firms in Wales and the MidlandsREAD MORE: Senedd Election manifesto from the Tories far more pro-business than Labour

Mr Dickinson said this system is the “critical first step in producing the spacecraft’s wiring harness,” and that their company is “the number one global provider for this specialist equipment. The global standard.”

Lasers from Spectrum Technologies has been used in all of the Artemis programmes and Mr Dickinson has said they will be used in Artemis III when astronauts return to the surface of the moon for the first time since 1972.

Mr Dickinson and the team at Spectrum Technologies are all excited to watch the Artemis programme succeed and to know they made an impact.

“The whole company has been watching what has been going on and we are all excited to be part of this pivotal moment of space exploration,” said Mr Dickinson.

“I remember as a teenager watching Apollo 11 landing on the moon. It is thrilling to be involved in this latest programme to take humans back to the moon.”

Lasers from the Bridgend-based company have been used in probes that have gone to Mars and in one called Lucy which is on a 12-year mission to Jupiter with the aim of discovering more about how our solar system was created.

The climate of the U.S. housing market for buyers varies around the country, and a new report suggests there are currently only eight metro areas that are truly buyer’s markets.

The economist research team at Realtor.com released a diagnostic tool called the Market Clock that tracks the housing market at the national and metro level based on months of supply, time on market, price changes and list-to-sale ratio to reflect local conditions.

It tracks the 50 largest metros in the U.S. and found in its first quarterly report that about half, or 46%, of the top markets are in balance with neither buyers nor sellers having an edge; while 26% are seller’s markets and only 16% are buyer’s markets.

The eight buyer’s markets are mostly located in the South, though there is one outlier in the West. None of the buyer’s markets were located in the Northeast or Midwest, where strong demand and restricted supply have either kept the housing market in balance or given sellers the edge.

PROPERTY TAX BURDEN ON AMERICANS CLIMBS AS HOME VALUES DIP, NEW DATA SHOWS

Eight of the top 50 metro areas in the U.S. were considered buyer’s markets in the Realtor.com report. (Loren Elliott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

For all the eight buyer’s markets, the Market Clock is at 5 o’clock, which signals they have ample supply of homes for sale with a growing number of listings and sellers lowering prices.

Half of the buyer’s markets are located in Florida – Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. The others are Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; and Riverside, California.

HOUSING MARKET GAINING MOMENTUM AS SPRING SEASON BEGINS

The buyer’s markets have more inventory of homes for sale and are growing the supply of housing with new construction. (Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel said that while active listings may not have risen year over year in each of the eight buyer’s markets, 

“Riverside and Nashville, for instance, have seen active listings increase 222% and 330%, respectively, since high interest rates reset the market in 2022 – significantly greater than the national average of 172% since March 2022,” he said.

THESE 10 HOUSING MARKETS GIVE FIRST-TIME BUYERS THE BEST SHOT AT HOMEOWNERSHIP IN 2026

Miami and several other Florida cities were among the buyer’s markets in the report. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The report noted that compared with June 2025, Atlanta, Austin, Nashville and Riverside all saw their position on the market clock loosen by one “hour” into an early buyer’s market from a late balanced market. Jacksonville followed a similar pattern, moving from being in balance to a buyer’s market.

By contrast, Miami, Orlando and Tampa were already early buyer’s markets in June and held steady at that level through the end of last year.

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Krimmel said that prospective buyers in all the eight metros have both time and options on their side this spring, giving them the opportunity to exert leverage up to a point when negotiating prices and concessions with sellers.