The Housing Division

Where are New Jersey's home prices headed? It depends on where in the state you are. In southern New Jersey, the latest figures show that house prices dropped in the first quarter of 2010 by 2.6 percent from the first quarter of 2009. But in the northern half of the state, home prices were up 2 percent in the same period.

Part of the issue here is not so much that the economy is so widely divergent in the various corners of the state, but that the baseline price was different. The standard comparison in these things is to the same period one year ago. One year ago, in the first quarter of 2009, northern New Jersey was coming to grips with the collapse of the financial sector: Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September 2008, and Citigroup was declared insolvent that November. Many financial professionals who live in the area were thrown out of work. That had a huge impact on the high-end housing market in North Jersey.

That's probably not the only factor at work here. But it's a good reminder that when you're comparing two economic changes, it's important to know not just what's changed but where you started from.