Open several browser tabs and search the same three words on each: Bradley Beach median home price. In September 2026, you will get different answers, and none of them is lying to you.
One national platform shows a median sale price of $1.1 million, up thirteen percent from a year earlier. Another shows homes currently listed at a median of $925,000, down sixteen percent from August. A third, tracking the trailing twelve months, puts the median sale price at $1,204,500, a thirty-three percent jump. An automated valuation model lands at $1,060,100. And buried on an older aggregator page, a figure from a previous update still reads $569,146, a number so far outside the others that it can only be describing a market that no longer exists. For a borough with roughly 4,300 residents and a housing stock small enough to count by hand, that is not statistical noise. It is the shape of the town itself.
The Numbers Nobody Reconciles
Here is what a buyer actually finds when comparing sources side by side this fall:
| Source type | Figure | What it measures | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listing-tracking site | $925,000 | Median asking price, active listings | September 2026 |
| Listing-tracking site | $950,000 | Median sale price | May 2026 |
| Brokerage sale-price tracker | ~$1,100,000 | Median closed sale price, up 13% YoY | Mid-2026 |
| Neighborhood guide (trailing 12mo) | $1,204,500 | Median closed sale, all property types | Rolling 12 months through summer 2026 |
| Automated valuation model | $1,060,100 | Blended estimate across all parcels | June 14, 2026 |
| Older aggregator cache | $569,146 | Undated median, not clearly refreshed | Unknown |
Every number above is technically accurate to its own methodology. None of them describes the same transaction. And that last row is worth sitting with for a second: not every published median on the internet is current. Some pages simply never get refreshed once the initial figure is scraped, and there is nothing on the page itself that flags how old the number is. A buyer skimming search results has no way to tell a live 2026 figure from a stale one sitting three or four years behind it, unless they know to ask.
Why One Town Produces Multiple Medians
The gap between $925,000 and $1,204,500 is not a mystery once you look at what Bradley Beach is actually built from. Roughly 48 percent of the borough's homes are single-family detached houses. Another meaningful share, over 23 percent by one count, are apartment and condo units. Townhomes make up a smaller slice, around 5 percent. And more than 38 percent of the housing stock predates 1939, which means a large portion of what's for sale on any given week is a century-old shore colonial, not a comparable, standardized product.
Stack a brand-new condo building's closing next to a pre-war multi-family conversion's closing next to a studio a block from the boardwalk, and you get three numbers that belong to three different markets sharing one zip code. A blended median, the kind most portals default to, averages all of them into a figure that describes none of them specifically.
Then there's volume. Bradley Beach does not sell enough homes in a given quarter for a median to behave the way it does in a larger town. Single-family sale counts tracked through recent MLS reporting show swings from as few as 5 homes in a slow quarter to 38 across a strong year. When your sample size is five transactions, one $3 million lakefront colonial or one $585,000 starter condo can swing the average by six figures on its own. That's how a full-year 2024 average of $1,123,974 can sit next to a first-quarter 2024 average of $811,799, a forty percent gap inside the same calendar year, with nothing structural in the market actually changing. The number moved because the sample changed, not because values did.
The Four Products Hiding Inside One Word
Anyone comparing "median home price" across Bradley Beach and a neighboring shore town is really comparing four distinct products, whether the listing sheet says so or not.
The pre-1939 single-family colonial. This is the classic Bradley Beach image: a shore colonial or beach cottage on a small lot, often within a few blocks of Fletcher Lake or the avenue beaches, sometimes rebuilt or elevated after Hurricane Sandy. Recent full-year MLS tracking put the average sale price for these homes near $1.28 million, moving in about 26 days and closing near 98 percent of list price. This is the product most buyers picture when they hear "Bradley Beach house," and it is also the one most exposed to condition, layout, and how well a century-old floor plan has been updated for modern living.
The multi-family income property. A meaningful share of Bradley Beach's mid-range listings are not single-family homes at all. They're colonials converted into two, three, or four rental units, marketed as much to investors as to owner-occupants. These properties often carry more square footage and more deferred maintenance than a comparable single-family listing at the same price point, and their value depends heavily on rental income and configuration, not just finish quality.
The new-construction condo. Bradley Beach has a small but active new-build condo segment, with recent listings priced roughly between $585,000 and $899,000 and a median condo price near $820,000. These units come with amenities the older housing stock simply doesn't have: fitness rooms, secure parking, modern mechanical systems. They also compress the value of "character," since buyers here are paying for newness rather than the wide porches and mature landscaping that define the older colonials a few blocks away.
The boardwalk studio or one-bedroom. At the entry point, Bradley Beach's condo stock runs as low as roughly $400,000 for a small unit near the ocean, a genuinely different affordability tier than anything else on this list, and a different buyer profile: someone prioritizing walkability to the train station and Main Street over square footage or renovation upside.
Before You Anchor to Any Median
A buyer weighing Bradley Beach against Ocean Grove, Point Pleasant, or another shore town should treat any single median figure as a starting question, not an answer. A few things worth confirming before it shapes a decision:
- Ask whether the figure is a listing price or a closed sale price. The two frequently diverge by tens of thousands of dollars in either direction depending on the season.
- Ask what property types are included. A median blending condos and single-family homes will read very differently than a single-family-only figure.
- Ask how many transactions the figure is based on. A median built from five sales carries far less signal than one built from thirty.
- Ask when the figure was last updated. Some published medians sit unchanged for long stretches and simply aren't tracking the current market.
- Ask what the comparable sales actually looked like: lot size, renovation status, distance to the water, whether the property was a multi-family conversion.
A Short FAQ
Why did the median I saw last month already look different this month? Because Bradley Beach's small sales volume means each month's closings can shift the median meaningfully. A handful of high-end colonial sales in one month and a cluster of condo closings the next will produce two very different numbers without the underlying market actually moving.
Which number should I trust? None of them in isolation. The more useful exercise is asking which product type you're actually buying, single-family, multi-family, new condo, or entry-level studio, and looking at recent closed sales within that specific category rather than the townwide blend.
Does a rising median mean values are going up across the board? Not necessarily. A jump in the median can reflect a shift in what sold, more high-end colonials, fewer starter condos, rather than every property in town appreciating at the same rate. Composition changes and price appreciation can look identical on a headline chart and mean very different things underneath.
A median is a useful starting point and a poor finish line, especially in a town where the housing stock itself refuses to sit still long enough to average cleanly. If you're comparing Bradley Beach against another shore community, or trying to figure out what a specific address, whether it's a pre-war colonial, a converted multi-family, or a newer condo, is genuinely worth, that's a conversation best had against real comparable sales rather than a headline number. Michele Taylor brings both real estate guidance and an interior designer's eye for what a property's condition and layout actually mean for its value. Contact us to talk through what a specific Bradley Beach property is worth before a townwide median makes the decision for you.
