Anthony Licciardello | April 24, 2026
Oceanport, NJ
Oceanport is the town everyone wants to talk about right now. It's the host municipality for Netflix Studios Fort Monmouth Phase 1A — the first four soundstages, the McAfee Center renovation, the earliest operational footprint — and it's a tiny peninsula of roughly 6,150 residents sitting on the Shrewsbury River with one of the strongest school districts in the county. The Netflix effect on Oceanport real estate is real. The headline numbers circulating online are not.
Phase 1A lands on the 39-acre McAfee parcel along Route 537 — the road locals still call the Avenue of Memories. Four soundstages, a mill building, two support and office buildings, and a warehouse, all inside a perimeter wall. One of those stages is configured as a "twin" with a movable interior wall that opens into 83,555 square feet of usable production space. The Oceanport Planning and Zoning Board approved the Phase 1A site plan unanimously on November 26, 2024 after five hours of testimony across two meetings.
The reason Oceanport got Phase 1A and not Eatontown comes down to the McAfee Center itself. The 1997 red brick research building — named for Dr. Walter S. McAfee, the civilian physicist whose work on Project Diana's 1946 moon radar experiment was done at Fort Monmouth — is being renovated as the operational nerve center for the entire campus. Production offices, wardrobe, hair and makeup, executive dressing rooms. When Phase 1A opens in 2027, the first trucks and trailers pull up to a building that's already 28 years old, already zoned, and already structurally suited to office conversion. That's months of schedule saved.
Phase 2 of the overall master plan sits entirely in Oceanport, too — 79 acres in the Gooseneck / 400 Area along Parkers Creek, which under Amendment 20 is designated for outdoor backlots, basecamps, and roughly 30 acres of permanent open space. That means Oceanport's relationship with the studio isn't just about the initial four stages. It's the long-term tail.
On December 4, 2025, the Oceanport Borough Council voted to approve a 30-year Payment in Lieu of Taxes agreement with Netflix. Netflix closed on the Mega Parcel the next day. The two events were sequenced deliberately.
Under the agreement, which covers only Phase 1A, Netflix will pay Oceanport approximately $64.8 million over 30 years. Adding the required administrative fee brings the total to roughly $66 million, with 5% of payments flowing to Monmouth County per statute. Separately, Netflix is contributing a $3 million Community Benefit payment — funds that don't flow through the PILOT structure and will be allocated by a borough committee for specific local needs. The first PILOT payment lands in 2027, timed to Phase 1A's operational opening.
Mayor Thomas Tvrdik pushed the deal as insulation. Streaming industry economics are volatile; corporate property tax revenue fluctuates with assessed value and appeals. A PILOT is a fixed contractual payment schedule — Netflix pays the same amount whether the studio is booked solid or empty, whether Netflix owns it in year 30 or sold it in year 15. For a borough of 6,150 residents with a limited tax base and high fixed costs (schools, public safety, infrastructure), that predictability has real value.
Netflix's PILOT revenue reduces the pressure on Oceanport's residential property tax base. It doesn't mean property taxes drop — it means future increases can be tempered, and municipal capital projects can be funded without deeper assessments on homeowners. For a borough where waterfront estates already carry six-figure annual property tax bills, that's a quiet but meaningful long-term tailwind on resale value.
This is where the coverage gets unreliable. You'll see headlines claiming Oceanport median prices are up 17.8% year-over-year, or 23%, or even higher. Those numbers are real for the specific month they cover — and they're also almost meaningless as a trend signal. Here's why.
Oceanport has about 2,400 residential housing units total. In a typical month, only four to ten homes actually close. At that sample size, a single waterfront Port-Au-Peck estate selling at $1.6 million in September can swing the monthly median by $200,000 or more. The following month, two ranch homes on Driftwood Circle close at $600K each and the median drops back down. Nothing structural changed. The sample just moved.
Looking at a full year of closings tells a more honest story. As of April 2026, the Oceanport median home price sits at roughly $993,000 with a 30-day median time on market, based on Homes.com's rolling data. Zillow's broader Home Value Index — which includes all housing types, not just recent sales — pegs Oceanport at around $787,000. Per-square-foot values on active listings run in the $440–$475 range, and active inventory has hovered between roughly 15 and 35 homes at any given time since late 2024. These are seller's market conditions, clearly — but they're not the runaway appreciation some coverage implies. Oceanport was expensive before Netflix. It's still expensive. The rate of change is less dramatic than the single-month headlines suggest.
Three structural factors were already in place before Netflix closed. First, Oceanport only has 3.17 square miles of land and is hemmed in by water on three sides — the Shrewsbury River peninsula geography means meaningful new construction is nearly impossible. Second, the Oceanport School District (Wolf Hill pre-K–4, Maple Place 5–8) consistently ranks in the top 20% of New Jersey districts and feeds Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch. Third, NJ Transit's North Jersey Coast Line runs nearby at Little Silver and Long Branch — both year-round commuter stops putting New York Penn Station roughly 80–95 minutes away. (The Monmouth Park station inside Oceanport itself runs only seasonally on weekends and holidays.)
Netflix didn't create the demand pressure in Oceanport. Netflix just added a new buyer cohort on top of the existing one.
Oceanport is small enough that residents talk about it in neighborhoods, not zip codes. Each section responds to the Netflix effect differently.
The peninsula that juts into the Shrewsbury River north of the NJ Transit tracks. Port-Au-Peck covers roughly half of Oceanport's land area and holds most of its waterfront inventory. Many of the streets here are named after Native American tribes, with Iroquois Avenue and Ithaca Avenue among the most recognizable. Housing runs from two-bedroom ranches to multi-million dollar riverfront estates with private docks. Listings in the Port-Au-Peck section have started referencing "minutes from the Netflix Studios Campus at Fort Monmouth" in their marketing copy — a tell that sellers and their agents are pricing in the proximity premium, rightly or wrongly.
The waterfront enclave on the borough's northeast tip, along Parkers Creek and the Shrewsbury River. Before Netflix came into the picture, the 400 Area at the end of Gooseneck was slated for a 236-home residential development. That plan was shelved when Netflix's Mega Parcel included Gooseneck for Phase 2 backlots and open space. Separately, Pulte has already sold out its new Parkers Creek townhome community on former Fort Monmouth land adjacent to the Netflix campus and Riverwalk Center — end units at the development closed in the low-to-mid seven figures. The residents closest to the future Netflix footprint live here, and they've been the most vocal at planning board hearings about perimeter walls, building heights, and traffic.
A tightly-held waterfront pocket that rarely turns over. Recent nearby sales have ranged from roughly $525,000 for inland homes to $3 million-plus for Blackberry Bay Lagoon waterfront estates with 400-foot bulkheads. Not a Netflix-specific submarket — more a destination for buyers who want waterfront Oceanport and are willing to wait for the right listing to surface.
The more affordable entry points into Oceanport, further from the water and closer to the Monmouth Park Racetrack. Ranch homes in the $600K–$850K range. This is where mid-level Netflix management and senior crew are more likely to land when Phase 1A staffs up in 2027 — close enough to walk or bike to work, priced below the waterfront premium, and still inside the Oceanport school district.
The Netflix-adjacent buyer pool is still small in early 2026. Phase 1A doesn't open for another year-plus, and Netflix posted its first operational job listings on February 23, 2026 — Director of Studio Operations ($420,000–$790,000) and Manager of Studio Site and Services ($181,000–$323,000). Those hires and the handful that follow them in 2026 represent the leading edge of what Oceanport will see.
Three buyer profiles are showing up in Oceanport inquiries right now:
| Buyer Profile | Target Price | Neighborhood Fit |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Netflix operations | $1.2M–$3M+ | Port-Au-Peck waterfront, Gooseneck, Blackberry Bay |
| Mid-level management + early ops | $750K–$1.2M | Interior Port-Au-Peck, Driftwood, upper Main Street |
| Specialty crew / early relocators | $600K–$850K | Elkwood Park, Main Street corridor, Oceanport rentals |
| NY/NJ commuter families (existing base) | $700K–$1.5M | Anywhere in-district, prioritizing schools and yard |
The fourth category matters. Oceanport's pre-Netflix buyer base — NYC commuters, growing families, waterfront lifestyle buyers — hasn't gone anywhere. They're still in the market, still competing for the same inventory, and many of them would have paid current prices even if Netflix had never closed on the Mega Parcel. When the local market gets characterized as "driven by Netflix," that's only partly right. A lot of what's showing up in the data is pre-existing demand finding even less available supply.
Three things worth considering before anyone treats Oceanport as a pure-upside trade.
Flood exposure. Roughly 55% of properties in Oceanport carry a major 30-year flood risk per First Street Foundation modeling. The peninsula geography that makes the town beautiful also makes insurance premiums significant and rising. Buyers focused purely on the Netflix thesis sometimes underweight this in their pro forma.
Traffic and infrastructure during buildout. Oceanport Avenue and Route 537 will absorb years of construction traffic through the 2028 completion date. Mayor Tvrdik has publicly noted that historic peak traffic volumes from "the fort fully operating along with Monmouth racetrack" were substantial — and the new traffic pattern will be different, with production trucks, talent transports, and construction vehicles routing through residential streets. The quality-of-life effect during buildout is a real factor for anyone buying to live in the home, not just to hold it.
The Netflix premium may already be priced in. Listings in Port-Au-Peck and interior Oceanport are increasingly marketed with "minutes from Netflix Studios" framing, and sellers are asking prices that assume the premium. If production ramp-up is slower than the 2027/2028 targets — or if the broader streaming industry enters another contraction cycle — the buyers paying that premium today may not see the appreciation they're underwriting for. Discipline matters more when a narrative gets loud.
Oceanport is a structurally tight market with genuinely good schools, genuine waterfront scarcity, strong transit nearby, and now a $900 million construction project wrapping up inside its borders. That combination is real. It supports continued price strength. It doesn't support the double-digit monthly appreciation claims that have been floating through secondary coverage.
For buyers: focus on fundamentals first. School boundary, neighborhood position, waterfront proximity, flood zone, lot size, home condition. Those are the factors that will still matter in 2032 when the initial Netflix excitement has normalized into the town's new permanent baseline. The Netflix premium is a tailwind, not a thesis.
For sellers: pricing discipline matters more than list-day optics. Oceanport's market absorbs well-priced homes quickly. It punishes aspirationally-priced homes with long days-on-market counts that ultimately force price reductions. The sellers who do best in 2026 will be the ones who price to recent genuine comparables, not to the headline that ran about the town last quarter.
For the broader Monmouth County picture, our pillar analysis of the Netflix effect across the county walks through how the three concentric rings of impact are playing out. For the companion deep-dives, we cover Red Bank's rapid market shift and Long Branch's luxury rental pipeline as part of this series.
Oceanport gets Phase 1A — the first four soundstages, the mill building, and the McAfee Center production offices — all targeted to open in 2027. Eatontown gets Phase 1B, which adds eight more soundstages with a 2028 target. A future Phase 2 on the Gooseneck / 400 Area in Oceanport will host outdoor backlots, basecamps, and permanent open space. Both towns are hosts; Oceanport simply goes first.
Honest answer: hard to isolate. Oceanport was a tight seller's market with limited inventory before Netflix closed, and it remains one. Monthly median price swings of 15%–25% are common here because only four to ten homes close per month, making the sample statistically noisy. The April 2026 Homes.com median for Oceanport sits at roughly $993,000 with a 30-day median time on market, and Zillow's broader Home Value Index reads closer to $787,000. That's elevated, but the year-over-year change is less dramatic than individual headline months suggest.
Not directly. The PILOT guarantees Oceanport approximately $64.8 million in payments over 30 years plus administrative fees, with the total reaching roughly $66 million. Those funds support municipal operations and capital projects, which reduces the pressure to raise residential property taxes to fund those needs. Homeowners shouldn't expect a tax cut, but they should see slower tax growth over time than they would have without the PILOT revenue stream.
The McAfee parcel, where Phase 1A's four soundstages are being built, sits along Route 537 (Avenue of Memories) in the central-western portion of the borough. Homes in Port-Au-Peck east of the railroad tracks are a short drive or bike ride away. The Pulte Parkers Creek townhome development along Parkers Creek sits directly adjacent to the campus and Riverwalk Center. Elkwood Park and the Main Street corridor are the most affordable entry points still within a quick commute to the campus.
Prodigy Real Estate is an innovative real estate company offering high-end video production, home valuation services, purchasing, and home sales. Serving New York and New Jersey.