In December 2025, an explosive report on NJ.com detailed how Montclair was $19.6 million in debt. In January, Montclair itself revealed its finances are even worse than had been reported. Today, Realtor.com revealed that home buyers … apparently don’t care.
Montclair just landed at No. 2 on Realtor.com’s 2026 list of the hottest ZIP codes in America. The median home there just crossed $1 million. It sold in a median of 18 days, and it sold for nearly 17% over asking — the steepest premium anywhere on the list. Buyers are showing up with an average 22% down payment, more than $318,000, and a median credit score of 783.
That’s not a town anyone is fleeing. It’s a town people are fighting to get into, budget crisis and all.
Here’s a detail that needs to be noted.
Montclair is the hometown of Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who has made “affordability” the anchor of her entire campaign and administration. It’s worth noting: typical household income in Montclair runs about 31% behind what it actually takes to buy the median home there — the widest such gap anywhere on Realtor.com’s top-50 list.
These numbers show an interesting aspect of the latest national political push toward affordability: Consumers can determine affordability, too.
***
To be sure, Montclair is not unique. They are found throughout Realtor.com’s Top 50 hottest housing markets — a list that seemingly doesn’t follow conventional wisdom. Or, at least, it doesn’t follow the recent Best States ranking by U.S. News.
New Jersey has two more towns in that top 50: No. 3 Sewell (part of a greater Philadelphia area) and Hackettstown (which cannot be confused with any big metro area).
Want more? Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania show up again and again down the list — Peabody, Fairport, Westfield, Stamford, York, Lititz. Seven of the top eight hottest ZIP codes in the entire country sit somewhere on the Boston-to-Philadelphia corridor.
None of those states cracked the top 10 of the CNBC 2026 Best States to Live rankings.
New Jersey came in at No. 20 on that list, below Massachusetts (No. 11) and Connecticut (No. 18) but ahead of New York (No. 23) and Pennsylvania (No. 40).
Meanwhile, Utah, South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota and Nebraska took the top five — and none of them have a single ZIP code anywhere near the hottest-markets list.
Are these places really different than the Northeast — or just a generation behind? Utah has seen an incredible surge in population, growing nearly 18% over the past decade, one of the fastest rates in the country. And with it has come a housing cost boom of its own: the average Utah home value has more than doubled since 2015, from around $230,000 to roughly $530,000 — comfortably outpacing the national home-price increase of about 95% over that same stretch. Utah isn’t cheap. It’s just newer.
So, which is it? Are we the best states, or aren’t we? Depends which company you ask, and what they’re measuring.
***
OK, so what does this all have to do with the economy? What matters more to a company deciding where to plant a flag — affordability and housing, or access to an educated workforce, the thing New Jersey always touts?
CNBC recently ran its own study, America’s Top States for Business, and New Jersey did poorly — 31st overall, and dead last, 50th in the nation, specifically for “business friendliness.”
I put that number to Evan Weiss, CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, at the end of a recent interview. He didn’t dodge it, exactly. But he didn’t accept the premise, either.
“I’ll make the obvious point,” Weiss said. “We’re No. 2 in education, No. 3 in quality of life. That’s so important. Because if you’re really business friendly — I won’t pick on a state — there are states that score much higher than us that I don’t think many businesses would want to be doing business in over us, because of how they do on some of these other metrics.”
N.J. Business and Industry Association CEO Michele Siekerka isn’t so sure. Reacting to the same CNBC ranking, she called the state’s foundational strengths a positive — but not a fix. She said the CNBC rankings should be a “wakeup call.”
New Jersey Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Bracken called the 50th-place business-friendliness ranking “a distinction no state should accept.”
Three voices, one data point, no consensus.
***
What have we learned? Aside from Montclair’s stunning spot on the list, not much.
Some companies (Exxon, Samsung, Mars Wrigley) have all recently announced they are leaving New Jersey in one way or another, in part because of the cost of doing business.
But if companies vote with their bottom line, people vote with their feet. And apparently a large number are walking around Montclair, showing they’re willing to move there at a premium price no one would call “affordable.”
Nobody’s bidding a house up 17% over asking in a place people are trying to escape.
