A two-bedroom house at 7 Sunset Drive in Millburn sold for $965,000 in July 2025 and is being replaced by a six-bedroom luxury home worth nearly $3 million.

Vantage Builders LLC closed on the property July 17, 2025, after a bidding war that drew more than a dozen potential buyers, Hoodline reported. The home had been listed Feb. 19, 2025, at $799,000 and went pending within nine days. It closed at 21% above asking price.

The builder is nearing completion on a 5,900-square-foot replacement with six bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms on the same 0.26-acre lot. The Saritte Harel Team at Keller Williams Premier Properties handled both the original sale and the new listing.

The deal reflects a broader shift in Millburn's housing market. Millburn's average home value reached $1.3 million by the end of July 2026, up nearly 10% year over year, according to Zillow data cited by Patch. In the luxury tier, homes priced between $2 million and $10 million hit a median sales price of $2.537 million in June 2026, a 36.2% jump from the prior year across 32 closed transactions, according to CENTURY 21 Preferred.

Supply is not keeping up. Single-family housing inventory in Essex County dropped 9.3% year over year to 633 available homes in July 2026, per New Jersey REALTORS data. Sellers received an average of 111.9% of their original listing price, the highest ratio of any New Jersey county.

CENTURY 21 Preferred attributed the demand partly to proximity to the Midtown Direct train line into New York City.

Not everyone welcomes the building boom. At the July 14 Township Committee meeting, a resident said a 2012 subdivision on Fairfield Drive raised the land by nearly 15 feet close to her patio, causing significant water flow toward her home. She said she spent more than $250,000 on drainage improvements and raised concerns about an upcoming teardown at the same site, TAPinto reported.

Mayor Frank Saccomandi said at the same meeting that stormwater challenges have become more common in Millburn and that the township has tightened zoning ordinances and improved drainage standards. Committeeman Ben Stoller agreed the matter warranted review. "If there's an issue, it should be resolved," Stoller said.

The township has taken regulatory steps to manage teardown impacts. Ordinances adopted in 2023 and June 2026 refined residential floor-area-ratio definitions and enforced prevailing front-yard setbacks to control home size and preserve neighborhood scale. Those changes followed Master Plan recommendations to monitor how teardowns affect established streets.

Officials also introduced a tree preservation ordinance in late July 2026 that would tighten rules on removing mature trees and set clearer replacement standards. The original two-bedroom home at 7 Sunset Drive carried a 2025 assessed value of $555,600 and an annual property tax bill of $11,218. Millburn homeowners paid an average tax bill of $26,292 in 2025 on an average assessed value of $1,302,529.