By Reuvain Borchardt

 

Menachem is living the life he envisioned when the native Brooklynite moved to Lakewood 21 years ago.

 

He has a top job in a successful local company. He has a wife who works part-time and seven wonderful children. He has plenty of relatives and a great group of friends, most of whom live within walking distance. He lives in a nice duplex in the Spruce Street area.

 

There’s just one thing he never imagined: that at 41, he’d still be renting a home.

 

Avigayil, 38, moved to Lakewood shortly after her wedding. Though she and her husband had few ties to anyone or anything in this town, they knew it was the place to be, and it offered cheaper housing options than anywhere in New York.

 

Now, 12 years later, they don’t have enough to put down for a suitable home in this market, and her family of five is still renting a basement apartment.

 

Miri is paying $4,300 a month for housing. That’s more than 50 grand a year for a duplex in the Route 88 neighborhood. But it’s not going toward a mortgage—it’s for rent instead of toward equity in a home of her own that she can one day pass on to her five children.

 

She and her husband save carefully; they’ve amassed nearly $200,000. But that’s woefully inadequate for a downpayment on a house in her neighborhood with an affordable mortgage. At 45 years old, she figures her best chance of buying a house is waiting another decade and hoping some retirement community will be a good fit for her and her family.

 

These are just three members of the Lakewood community—all with solid jobs, hardworking spouses, and responsible financial planning—who see no hope of achieving the American dream of homeownership. They are three of the thousands who moved here either to be a part of the BMG community or because this is the fastest-growing frum area in the country or because houses here seemed to be cheaper than in New York.

 

But they, like so many others as they sign their rent check each month, sigh and wonder, “Will I ever afford to buy a home?”

 

 

“When I became a realtor, you could get a home in Lakewood for $330,000,” recalls Shea Spiegel of Imperial Real Estate, chuckling at a memory that’s just a decade old but seems like from a different world.

 

“Of course, that was just for a ranch in one of the less desirable neighborhoods. Duplexes were going for $550,000 to $600,000, and single detached homes were about 800 grand. But today, every neighborhood in Lakewood is desirable, any ranch goes for a minimum of $700K, you can’t find a new duplex for less than $1.1 million, and no developer is developing single homes.”

 

Those looking for cheaper homes can, of course, go out to the “suburbs,” where they’ll pay far less per square foot than in Lakewood. Homes in Manchester can be had for as little as $450K, and in Howell they’re $500K. In Jackson and Toms River, depending on the neighborhood, you can still find homes for as little as $600K. Or you can pay twice that for a large, beautiful house that can’t be had in Lakewood unless you also own a Brinks truck.

 

Spiegel estimates that half his sales are in Lakewood and half are in the surrounding towns.

 

Most people prefer to live in Lakewood if they can afford it, though you get less bang for your buck there and there’s less privacy, due to the accessibility of shopping and schools and yeshivah and being near family who may have bought homes there years ago.

 

“But there’s a wide variety of buyers,” Spiegel says. “Some have family in Lakewood or want to be close to the yeshivah, and they don’t mind something smaller or older. Others are willing to go farther out to afford something larger. There are also some people who already bought homes in Jackson or Toms River but now decided they want to sell and move back to Lakewood, because they can’t stand being on the road in traffic all day whenever they go shopping or bring their kids to school in Lakewood. And there are people who have no connection to the yeshivah or Lakewood at all and want specific areas of Jackson or Toms River because they have family there.”

 

 

The sharp rise in home prices is a reality for a community experiencing explosive growth—the housing stock can’t keep up, even in a town where it seems a development is built on every free blade of grass. (A resident who first came to Lakewood to learn by Rav Aharon more than 65 years ago recently told me, “Back then, there were ‘woods,’ but today it’s just the ‘lake.’”)

 

But even for those willing to move to the burbs and who can afford to plunk down a hefty downpayment, the monthly mortgage payment can be eye-popping.

 

Isaac Gluck, senior loan officer at the Leiman Mortgage Network, says a large share of loans he brokers now are for homes in surrounding towns, mainly Howell and Manchester. Typically, the purchase price is between $700K and $800K, with buyers putting down 15–20 percent. With mortgage rates now in the high-5 percent range, and adding property taxes and home insurance, the average monthly payments are $4,000 to $4,500.

 

When I ask Gluck how people can afford the downpayments, he replies, “There are people who are disciplined and put away money. Also, I’d say 30 percent of people are getting some sort of assistance toward the downpayment.”

 

But what about rebbe’im, teachers, and others who don’t get help? How can they ever afford a downpayment or a mortgage in excess of four grand?

 

“The only way for them is to win the lottery for low-income housing or buy smaller homes in places like Manchester or Howell,” he says. “But the kashe is better than the teretz.

 

“There have been programs and campaigns trying to help people buy homes,” he continues. “The nature of life is that it becomes more expensive to live as time goes by, and large families just can’t afford to buy homes anymore. A $200,000 income is beautiful on paper, but there are people making $200,000 in our community who live paycheck to paycheck.”

 

Gluck is acutely aware of the cost of living because he’s been involved in raising funds to help people who are unable to afford basic needs for Yom Tov.

 

“In other years, the campaign brought in far more money. But this year, people aren’t donating as much because the cost of living for them is so much higher. They’re making what on paper are nice salaries, but the cost of living is astronomical.”

 

Yet, he says, many somehow manage to scrape together funds to buy a home because “for many people, buying is a necessity, not a luxury.” Also, people prefer to spend their money toward mortgage payments than rent.

 

“If you can afford it, it makes sense to buy a starter home, even if you’ll outgrow it in a few short years,” he says. “You have an asset in which your payments are building equity, and if you love the area and have the property, you might even be able to build it out.”

 

While housing is cheaper in the burbs, moving there can have its drawbacks. Lakewood residents are at the center of everything, near stores and schools and family and friends. Moving to another town, depending on the location, might mean driving to Lakewood anytime you want to go shopping, possibly not having school busing, and no longer being within walking distance of family and friends. No more going to the in-laws or a friend for a seudah or for a Shabbos visit.

One of those who did move out is Shlomo Schorr, the director of Agudath Israel’s New Jersey office. Lakewood born and bred, the 33-year-old had been living with his family of five in a three-bedroom basement in the Albert area before purchasing his first home last year: a four-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Manchester’s Pine Lake Park neighborhood.

He would have preferred to buy a home in Lakewood, but that was unaffordable. Yet now he’s grateful he was forced out.

 

“After having lived here a year, even if I were able to afford that $1.5 million house, I’d rather be in Manchester,” he says. “It has a terrific quality of life. It’s quiet, I have my own yard, and I have privacy. If we need to go to Lakewood to go shopping, we’re 15 minutes away from any type of store we’d need. But unlike those who live in Lakewood, day to day we don’t have to deal with traffic.”

The one issue he concedes is school busing, which isn’t provided between Manchester and Lakewood, though the state gives parents aid-in-lieu of $1,177 per kid toward transportation. He’s fortunate that many people in his neighborhood send their kids to the same schools he does, and they got together and arranged their own busing. For his two school-aged children, he pays less than $1,000 a year toward busing on top of the aid-in-lieu.

“Otherwise,” he says, “there are no drawbacks to living here. In fact, right now I’m living just about the same driving time from my son’s school as I was in Lakewood, both because of distance and traffic. What I once thought was a fallback option is now my preference.”

 

And he urges those afraid of living outside Lakewood, “Talk to people like me who actually did it. Come out and do the drive, see the town, see the shuls, see the quality of life, and then make a decision. Don’t rule it out before checking it out.”

 

 

 

 

While Manchester is a relatively new frum neighborhood, Schorr can hardly be called a pioneer. Pine Lake Park has some 600 frum families and 10 shuls.

 

But for those seeking a really good deal, pioneering is the way to go.

 

That’s what Shimon, now 38, did in 2021.

 

His family had outgrown their small Lakewood home, and he wanted to get out, away from the traffic, to a large house on a quiet street. He figured Jackson would be a good idea, but the popular neighborhoods there were out of his budget.

 

“Three times, I bid the asking price on a house, and all three times, I was outbid by Yidden, and each house sold for a hundred grand more than its asking price,” he recounts.

 

“I refused to get into a bidding war with Yidden. I knew all that would happen was that the seller would make a killing, some Yid would be out more money than he had to be, and prices in the area would rise further. My policy was that I put down a bid, and if I was outbid, I was done.”

 

Well, he eventually was done with those popular neighborhoods and looked farther out. He found a stunning home in the Leesville–Diamond area with spacious front and back yards and a swimming pool at an attractive price. He grabbed it.

At the time, no frum Jew lived within a mile and a half.

 

 

“It was hard not having Jewish neighbors and driving the kids to and from school in Lakewood every day,” Shimon recalls. “But we were grateful we’d been able to buysomething.”

 

On Shabbos, Shimon had to walk 45 minutes to the nearest shul, in the heat and cold and snow and wind. There were no friends to visit, no shalom zachar or oneg Shabbos or shared seudah. “We spent Shabbos learning together and having great family time,” he remembers fondly.

 

“I was comfortable waiting five years for frum Jews to come here, which is what I figured it might take. All I could do was hope it would happen eventually, though you never know.”

 

It didn’t take nearly as long as he’d figured. Within 18 months after his move, 15 families had moved into the neighborhood, and a shul had opened just a 15-minute walk away.

 

Now, at the five-year mark, the community has long been thriving, although those moving in now “are paying 50 percent more than we did,” Shimon says. “Our decision worked out very well.”

 

And his message to those now looking to buy a home is simply: “Don’t force yourself to live in a neighborhood you can’t afford.”

 

A major factor in soaring home prices, as Shimon found out, is the bidding war among community members.

 

One Lakewood askan who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “We’re killing ourselves. Many of the people who sell to us would have been happy making much less than they ended up getting, but we’re bidding against each other and driving up prices.”

 

Some other communities have enacted takanos to shield homebuyers from the market forces that push up real estate prices when demand outstrips supply. In one recent example, the Satmar Rebbe Rav Aharon Teitelbaum drove down home prices by instituting a ceiling of $300 per square foot on housing units in Kiryas Joel. He also arranged a new project to build in Monticello at $200 a square foot, open to people of any background.

 

But Greater Lakewood is not a homogenous community. It is the area to which chareidim of all stripes and from all communities have flocked, each belonging to their own kehillah. There are no edicts or price ceilings that could ever be decreed or enforced across this diverse swath of Central Jersey.

 

And so, for better or worse, Lakewood will remain a free market for housing.

 

So where does that leave people like Menachem, Miri, and Avigayil?

 

Likely as lifelong renters.

 

“I’d love to buy a home,” says Menachem, “but it’s becoming less and less likely for me to be able to do so in my dream neighborhood in Lakewood. I grew up in Flatbush, and it’s hard for me to see Lakewood turning into the next Brooklyn with its outlandish pricing.”

 

Both Menachem and Miri can afford homes in nearby towns. But moving out of their Lakewood neighborhoods isn’t feasible at their—and more importantly, their kids’—ages.

 

“The crowd in those places is too young, and there are no shuls and friends for our stage,” Miri says. “Also, we’re chassidish, which further restricts the options—we need a chassidish shul in the neighborhood. Howell has chassidish families, but the typical Howell family is younger than ours, and my kids wouldn’t have friends there.”

 

Menachem says, “I really don’t want to move out to the hicks. For me, Lakewood, and my immediate area, is where my family and friends live, and I’m not a pioneer ready to go it alone for a house.”

 

Avigayil says she’d happily move out of her Lakewood basement apartment and into a home in another town, but only in places where her kids could have friends. That eliminates some of the cheapest neighborhoods, which tend to be younger.

 

“But we realized that the houses that worked for us were still way out of budget—just four bedrooms in a friendly, pashut neighborhood go for $800,000.”

 

Avigayil says she lives simply and saves carefully. “I buy clothes in Serendipity, Marshalls, and Walmart, and my husband’s car is far more yeshivish than we are.” She’s flabbergasted that the $150,000 she has amassed for a down payment (with parental help) is still not enough for a simple home.

 

“I genuinely don’t know how other people do it,” she says.

 

Yet they’re all happy to be living here, in what has become the center of gravity of Orthodox life in America, and maintain a positive outlook.

 

“Buying is overrated,” Miri says. “Plenty of people in other cities live in rentals their whole lives, and unless some miracle happens, we’ll do it too. Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and has the highest rate of rentals in the world too. Buying a house is only a part of the American dream.”

 

Menachem keeps the faith and says, “I know that everything is min haShamayim and the reason I haven’t bought a house yet is that Hashem just didn’t want me to.”

 

Avigayil remains optimistic, noting that the market in her preferred neighborhoods appears to be coming down somewhat. Some of the same homes that were $800K last year are now listed for $700K.

 

“We hope to start looking again in a few months,” she says with a hopeful smile. “If we still can’t swing it, we may consider renting a house instead. It would be nice to live aboveground.”

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