Hoboken Mom Condo Living
Planning the long-term & juggling the everyday

I have a confession: I have never tried to rent a 3BR in Hoboken. 2BR yes, but never a 3BR.  We jumped right from owing a 2BR to owning a 3BR because that’s how much I hate renting. So I had a glaring blind spot in my knowledge base that I have recently been educated on.

The short answer is there really aren’t any Hoboken 3BRs. Or to be more precise, there aren’t any that families would want to live in. Apparently the overwhelming majority of 3BR condos are floor-through penthouse units in walkup buildings, with smaller units on all the lower floors. Great for views, not so much for those of us toting strollers and small screamy people. An elevator and parking spot were dealbreakers for my family.

Let’s look at the numbers. Searching for 3BR+, 2BA+ on the MLS yields 21 rental listings, ranging in price from $2,200 all the way up to $9,500 (yikes). It’s really hard to tell which units are acceptable and which ones aren’t since details like floorplans and square footage are optional on the the MLS (I know there are 1,000 SF 3BRs out there -how big are the bedrooms, the size of shoeboxes?), but it looks like the decent ones start at $4k/month, and there are only six units total from there to the top of the heap.

Okay, so maybe the 3BR owners just aren’t renting their units right now. Let’s take a look at the sale side of things. Apparently there are 69 3BR units on the market right now, or 12% of the total inventory (the lion’s share are 2BRs, with 54%). Ouch. And most of them are either too small or too expensive for your average Hoboken 2BR owner to upgrade to.

Talking to some of my realtor contacts confirmed my suspicions about the 3BR market in Hoboken. There really aren’t many large units, and the nice new ones are heavily concentrated in the southwest and northeast, not the areas that are most desirable in Hoboken (SW still has a ways to go in terms of curb appeal, and NE is crazy expensive, double the price of southwest). Both areas are pretty far from the PATH, although NE has the ferry and SW has the light rail.

This is really bad news for all those families crammed into 2BRs who assume they can sell their units and rent larger ones nearby. If you have a family and want to stay in Hoboken, your options are a lot more limited than I realized. No wonder so many people head to the suburbs. I wonder how many would stay if they could get the golden trifecta: space (1,700+ SF), amenities (elevator and parking) and price ($600k-$800k)?