Englewood Cliffs Has Two Housing Markets, and the Median Hides Which One You're Buying Into

Two buyers place offers in Englewood Cliffs on the same Saturday. One is looking at a 1970s split-level that has been on NJMLS for four months. The other is chasing an architect-driven new build on Roberts Road that will be under contract before the second open house. Both are shopping the same ZIP code. Neither is shopping the same market.

If you rely on a town median to price your offer, you will overpay for the first house and underbid the second.

The Median Is Doing Three Different Jobs

Pull Englewood Cliffs on four different portals this summer and you will get four different answers, because each tool is averaging a different mix of resale, new construction, and listing versus sold data.

Same borough, same 07632, spread of nearly $2M between the lowest and highest "median." The reason is straightforward. The median sale price per square foot is $431, down 16.3% since last year, while the median sale price came in at $1.9M, both dragged by older resale inventory. Meanwhile, there are currently 6 homes for sale matching new construction in Englewood Cliffs at a median listing price of $3.69M. The list-side medians on Movoto and Redfin's new-construction filter are pulling from a different tier of product than the sold-side median.

A buyer who anchors on $1.9M and tours a new spec home will feel like the market has lost its mind. A buyer who anchors on $3.79M and tours a 1970s colonial will feel the same way in the opposite direction.

What Actually Trades Fast

The upper tier is not slow. It is disciplined about product. In March 2026, New Jersey Proper closed the highest residential sale ever recorded on NJMLS in Englewood Cliffs with the transaction of 645 Summit Street at $5,400,000, surpassing the previous record of approximately $4.77 million. The home was not a legacy estate. The property at 645 Summit Street reflects the continued demand for newly constructed, architecturally driven homes in Bergen County, with design by Jordan Rosenberg and interiors by Vanessa DeLeon.

Walk through current inventory and the pattern repeats. Peak Developers' 30 Skyline is a chateau-inspired build of roughly 7,200 square feet with six bedrooms and an infinity-edge pool. A Roberts Road spec home sits on 0.47 acres at approximately 11,500 square feet across three elevator-serviced levels, with a full-width folding glass wall opening to the pool patio. These are not comps for one another and they are certainly not comps for the split-level down the street.

The annual data confirms the compression at the top. According to NJMLS statistics compiled for Englewood Cliffs, average sale price rose from $1.30M in 2016 to $2.07M in 2025, average days on market improved from 116 days in 2016 to 61 days in 2025 with a decade low of 42 days in 2024, and Sale-to-Original-List-Price ranged from 87.97% in 2019 up to 98.49% in 2024, finishing 2025 at 97.31%. When the right product hits the market, it closes near list.

The luxury tier in Englewood Cliffs is not a slow market. It is a selective one. Product fit is doing the work that scarcity does elsewhere.

What Sits

Now look at the same borough through a different filter. The Englewood Cliffs, NJ housing market is not very competitive, scoring 24 out of 100. The average Englewood Cliffs house price was $1.35M last month, down 31.9% since last year. On the trailing quarter, multiple offers are rare. The average homes sell for about 3% below list price and go pending in around 105 days.

That 105-day figure is not describing the same houses that hit the NJMLS record. It is describing the middle of the borough: 1960s and 70s brick colonials and split-levels that have not been rebuilt. Housing styles range from classic brick colonials and split-level homes built in the 1960s and 70s to large modern estates. There has been a trend of replacing older homes with contemporary designs, leading to limited housing inventory.

For a seller in the resale tier, the friction is real. Buyers looking at $1.5M to $2.2M homes have time. They are cross-shopping Cresskill, Demarest, and Tenafly, where most homes for sale in Cresskill stay on the market for 54 days and receive 3 offers, roughly half the Englewood Cliffs number. If your Englewood Cliffs resale is priced against the record-setting new builds, you will sit. If it is priced against Cresskill's turnover, it will move.

How to Comp When the Town Won't Cooperate

The practical exercise is to stop pricing by town and start pricing by product tier and street.

Sort your comps by three attributes before you run an average:

1. Year built and reconstruction status. A 2024 new build and a 1972 split on the same street are not comps. The condo submarket is on its own clock again. As of a recent trailing window on Realtytrac, single family list price per square foot moved up 1.93% while condo list price per square foot moved 9.38%, and single family homes carry roughly a $33 per square foot premium over condos on average.
2. Sub-area. Buyers commonly reference North Cliffs, East Hill, and the streets closer to the Fort Lee corridor as distinct pockets. A flat 150 by 200 lot in North Cliffs prices differently than a sloped parcel closer to Palisade Avenue.
3. Sale-to-original-list ratio, not sale-to-final-list. The 97.31% Sale/OLP for 2025 is measured against the original ask, so a listing that cut price twice before selling near the third list price will look like a strong result in a Sale/List calculation and a weak one in Sale/OLP. Ask your agent to pull both.

For sellers, the takeaway inverts. If your home sits in the resale tier, the Value-Up questions are whether reconstruction is worth pursuing before listing, whether staging can close the gap against new construction visually, and whether spring positioning outperforms a summer launch when new-build inventory is deepest.

The Zoning Backdrop That Shapes Supply

One reason Englewood Cliffs' new-construction pipeline is so concentrated at the top of the market is that the borough's most visible development fight has been about height and ridgeline, not density. LG Electronics proposed a new eight-story, 143-foot-high office tower headquarters atop the Palisades, where it would disrupt views of the cultural landscape, and the Town of Englewood Cliffs changed local zoning laws to allow this tower to rise above the ridge's tree-line. A coalition of conservation groups and LG Electronics USA later reached a settlement on a new design for the company's American headquarters at the Palisades.

That episode matters for residential buyers because it shaped the borough's political posture toward large-footprint construction. New residential supply is arriving as one-at-a-time architect-driven rebuilds on existing lots, not as subdivisions or townhouse tracts. When rebuild economics favor the top of the market, the top of the market is what gets built. The middle stays stuck with the original 1970s stock until the next teardown cycle catches it.

FAQ

Why does Redfin call Englewood Cliffs "not very competitive" when Sotheby's and NJMLS report record-setting sales? Because Redfin's competitiveness score is weighted toward broad-market signals like days on market and share of homes selling above list. The borough's resale tier drags those signals down. The luxury tier trades in a small enough volume that it does not move the aggregate score.

Are new-construction homes here selling below list too? Not on the same pattern. The 2025 NJMLS Sale/OLP of 97.31% covers all property types, and the strongest new-construction transactions cluster near or at list when the finish level, lot, and street are right. That is the case the record on Summit Street illustrates.

How does Englewood Cliffs compare to nearby Cresskill for a move-up buyer? Cresskill's new-construction median sits closer to $1.67M with a 54-day median DOM, so a Cresskill buyer at $1.6M to $1.8M is competing against three-offer scenarios rather than 105-day sits. Englewood Cliffs at the same price point is a slower, more negotiable market. The two towns look similar on paper and behave differently in a transaction.

Is the $5.4M record a ceiling or a starting point? Active listings on Roberts Road and in North Cliffs are already priced above the previous record, so treat the number as a benchmark for what closed, not what the market is willing to consider.

If you are pricing an offer or preparing a listing in Englewood Cliffs, the wrong comp set is the most expensive mistake in the borough right now. Stacy Esser Group works both tiers of this market and can pull the sub-area and product-type comps that portal medians will not show you. Schedule a Meeting Today.