Rumson, New Jersey has spent decades as Monmouth County’s best kept secret. Not anymore.
A sprawling waterfront compound on the Navesink River just hit the market for $26 million, which could stand as the highest asking price in Monmouth County history if it closes anywhere near list. It’s not an isolated blip.
Just down the road, a home sold this year for $20 million and the buyers are tearing it down to rebuild.
Zoom out further and the town’s entire market has been climbing steadily upward, with the median list price now sitting at $3.22 million and closings in the $3 million to $4.5 million range showing up on a near weekly basis, according to listing data.
Rumson, New Jersey’s real estate market has quietly climbed into eight figure territory, and locals say it’s starting to look a lot like the Hamptons without the Hamptons style traffic. Jin – stock.adobe.com
The $26 million listing, at 100 W River Rd, includes four separate residences spread across more than five private acres, and it’s the clearest sign yet that this tiny riverside enclave 45 minutes from Manhattan has quietly transformed into one of the priciest zip codes on the East Coast.
The main house is a custom four story residence with six bedrooms, seven full baths and three half baths, plus a private elevator. The kitchen is stocked with Sub-Zero, Gaggenau, Wolf and Miele appliances, and the lower level has a cedar sauna, an exercise room and a hot tub. The primary suite comes with its own sitting room and library, along with a spa style bathroom finished in Perrin & Rowe fixtures and Ann Sacks tile.
A waterfront compound with four residences on the Navesink River just listed for $26 million. Architectural Media Services
Beyond the main house sits a five bedroom guest residence, a staff house and a carriage house. Down by the water there’s a boathouse topped with a fiberglass rooftop deck and an Ipe dock with a boat lift, opening straight onto the Navesink. The grounds also include an infinity edge pool ringed in travertine, English style hedged gardens, a mature apple orchard, a greenhouse and an eight car garage.
The beach, area yacht and country clubs, and NYC ferry service are all just minutes away.
If the deal closes near ask, it would set a new high water mark for the town.
Rumson’s current record belongs to Long Point Estate, an 18,000 square foot waterfront property on the Navesink that sold for $12 million, a deal that stood as the largest residential transaction in Rumson history at the time.
More recently, Villa Paradiso, a 17,425 square foot mansion on the Navesink with 200 feet of private waterfront, hit the market for $17.5 million, another sign that Rumson’s ultra high end has been creeping toward eight figures well before this latest listing.
The kitchen of the $26 million property is shown. Architectural Media Services
The property could set a new record for the town if it closes near ask. Architectural Media Services
Laura LoPresti of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, who holds the listing alongside Mario Venancio, said the number is new territory for the area but not out of step with where the market has been heading since the pandemic.
“When COVID started in 2020, any inventory that was on the market cleared off the market,” LoPresti told The Post. “And since then, it’s just gone upward.”
And $26 million isn’t even the ceiling. LoPresti said a house just a handful of doors down from the listing recently traded for $20 million, and the buyers are tearing it down.
Rumson has always drawn Manhattan money looking for a shortcut between office and ocean. LoPresti described it as a longtime “bedroom community for New York,” where a SeaStreak ferry ride puts commuters on Wall Street or in Midtown within roughly 45 minutes to an hour.
“It allows people to have your cake and eat it too, if you will,” she said. “You can work in the city and in 45 minutes or an hour tops, your home in your dining room having dinner with your family.”
What’s changed, LoPresti said, is visibility. Rumson isn’t a new discovery, it’s a formerly quiet one.
“It just wasn’t talked about,” she said. “And the numbers that you’re seeing fly around now, as far as sale pricing, you weren’t seeing that before because it was really kind of like a secret almost. We used to say the best kept secret in Monmouth County is Rumson and the whole peninsula area.”
That listing sits alongside a documented pattern of rising prices, including a $20 million teardown sale this year, the $17.5 million Villa Paradiso listing, and the town’s current benchmark, the $12 million Long Point Estate sale. Jin – stock.adobe.com
More typical closings have also climbed, with recent sales on Buena Vista Avenue ($4.55M), Ridge Road ($4.4M), Lauriston Court ($3.9M), and Evergreen Drive ($2.28M), against a town median list price of $3.22 million. Architectural Media Services
The geography does a lot of the selling. The town sits between the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers, with the beach at Sandy Hook roughly seven minutes from the $26 million compound. Add Hartshorne Woods, a 400 to 500 acre stretch of hiking and biking trails less than five minutes away, and LoPresti argues Rumson offers a Hamptons style lifestyle without the Hamptons style traffic.
“Comparatively to the Hamptons, the beach is maybe seven minutes from this house, if that,” she said. “What are you getting there that you’re not getting here? Nothing, once you discover it.”
Like much of the country, Rumson’s market has been squeezed by thin inventory since the pandemic, and LoPresti said that scarcity is doing a lot of the work behind the eye popping prices.
The numbers back her up. Recent closings around town include a six bedroom house on Buena Vista Avenue that sold for $4.55 million in June, a four bedroom on Ridge Road that fetched $4.4 million the same month, and a five bedroom on Lauriston Court that traded for $3.9 million in July. Even the smaller sales are climbing, with a three bedroom on Evergreen Drive closing for $2.28 million earlier this month.
The family has owned the land since the early 1990s and is selling as it enters, in LoPresti’s words, “just a different chapter.”
Listing agent Laura LoPresti attributes the surge to pandemic era inventory shortages that never recovered, growing awareness of Rumson’s Manhattan-adjacent lifestyle, and rising buzz from Netflix’s nearly $1 billion production studio under construction at the former Fort Monmouth base. Architectural Media Services
Jon Bon Jovi seen taking the stage at Rumson High School back in 2007 to raise money for The Parker Family Health Center. WireImage
Rumson already has a quiet celebrity pedigree. Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and Patti Scialfa have all had ties to the area over the years, and Queen Latifah and singer Charlie Puth have also called the town home, according to public records. Fox News anchor Bret Baier and actress Siobhan Fallon Hogan round out the list of notable residents tied to the address.
LoPresti sees room for that list to grow, particularly as construction continues on Netflix’s roughly 292 acre production studio a short drive away on the former Fort Monmouth Army base in Eatontown and Oceanport. The streaming giant has committed close to $1 billion to the project, which will eventually house 12 soundstages.
As for how longtime locals feel about their secret getting out, LoPresti said the adjustment period is mostly behind them.
“Locals at this point, we’re used to it,” she said. “As all things go, people get used to things after a few months or maybe a year. And it just becomes the new way.”
