Anthony Licciardello | April 20, 2026
Netflix
Netflix paid $55 million for 292 acres — $47 million for the land, $5 million in utility contributions, and $3 million in relocation fees. That's the purchase. On top of that sits a planned $900 million-plus capital investment to build 12 soundstages, nearly 500,000 square feet of production space, and close to one million square feet of total built campus. When complete, this will be Netflix's second-largest studio globally, trailing only Albuquerque.
The build is phased. Phase 1A lands first: four soundstages on the 39-acre McAfee parcel in Oceanport, targeting a 2027 opening. Phase 1B follows in Eatontown — eight additional stages pushing west toward Route 35 — on a 2028 schedule. The closing on December 5, 2025 was the trigger. Demolition has been running since May 2025 under a pre-closing agreement, and excavation is visible from Route 35 today.
This project doesn't exist without a three-layer incentive stack. The state set the table first. In May 2024, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority formally designated Netflix a Studio Partner, which obligates Netflix to occupy a New Jersey production facility for at least ten years and unlocks a 40% base film tax credit on qualified production expenses filmed in-state. Seven months later, in December 2024, the NJEDA Board approved up to $387 million in Aspire tax credits for the Fort Monmouth build itself.
FMERA cleared the regulatory path next. Amendment 20 to the Fort Monmouth master reuse plan, adopted in February 2024, rewrote the zoning to permit motion picture studios, backlots up to 85 feet tall (soundstages themselves cap at 70 feet exterior, 50 feet interior clearance), a hotel, and consumer-facing retail fronting Route 35 and Oceanport Avenue. Without Amendment 20, the math doesn't work — standard suburban commercial zoning won't accommodate industry-standard soundstages.
The host municipalities closed the deal. Eatontown approved its PILOT agreement on October 22, 2025: a $47 million upfront payment, restricted to infrastructure and redevelopment projects. Oceanport followed on December 4, approving a 30-year PILOT that guarantees the borough $66 million including administrative fees, plus a separate $3 million Community Benefit payment. The first PILOT payment to Oceanport lands in 2027. Both structures insulate the towns from streaming industry volatility — Netflix pays on the schedule regardless of revenue swings.
The $47 million Eatontown payment can't go into the general fund or routine operating budget. It's restricted to roads, sewers, public facilities, and redevelopment infrastructure. Translation: Eatontown is about to absorb a decade's worth of capital improvements in one lump sum, without raising property taxes to pay for them. That's a quiet tailwind for resale values on older Eatontown homes whose value has been held back by aging municipal infrastructure.
Demolition is the loud part. Since May 2025, crews have been removing roughly 88 obsolete military structures across the Mega Parcel — barracks, warehouses, outbuildings that have sat empty since the base closure in 2011. That work clears over one million square feet of blight and runs through early 2026. Because the site borders established residential neighborhoods in Oceanport and Eatontown, Netflix is running continuous perimeter air monitoring per NJDEP 2023 guidance, with real-time particulate sensors triggering automated alerts to contractors if dust exceeds set limits.
What's being preserved matters as much as what's coming down. Eight historic buildings are locked into the master plan for restoration and reuse. The crown jewel is the McAfee Center — a 1997 red brick research building on Route 537 named for Dr. Walter S. McAfee, the mathematical physicist whose work on Project Diana's 1946 moon radar experiment was conducted at this site. Netflix is converting McAfee into production offices, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and executive dressing rooms. Vail Hall, six former barracks along the Avenue of Memories, Greely Field, Cowan Park, and the World War II Memorial are all protected as deed-restricted open space or adaptive reuse.
Phase 1A is where construction goes vertical first. The 39-acre McAfee parcel will house four soundstages — one configured as a "twin" with a movable wall that creates 83,555 square feet of usable production space — plus a mill, two support and office buildings, a warehouse, and a surrounding perimeter wall. The footprint of the old military bowling center in Eatontown becomes a stormwater detention basin. Phase 1B will build eight more soundstages and push the campus toward the heavily trafficked Route 35 corridor.
Jobs numbers get inflated fast in economic development coverage. Here's what's on the record. Netflix and the NJEDA are aligned on 3,500 construction jobs across the build period and 1,500 permanent positions at full operation. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos cited the 1,500 figure publicly in 2023, and NJEDA CEO Tim Sullivan reiterated it at the December 2024 Aspire approval. Some secondary coverage has cited permanent-job ranges as high as 2,000 — that's not from any primary source.
The wage picture sharpened on February 23, 2026 when Netflix posted the first two operational roles. Director of Studio Operations: $420,000 to $790,000. Manager of Studio Site and Services: $181,000 to $323,000. Additional postings for Manager, Client Services and Manager of Studio Security Operations followed. These are senior roles — the people who will run the campus day-to-day — and the salary bands communicate Netflix's read on local cost of living and executive compensation benchmarks.
The workforce pipeline is being built in parallel. The New Jersey Film Academy at Brookdale Community College cut its ribbon on December 4, 2024 and began classes in January 2025. Within its first year, the academy served 216 students across three tracks — On Set Production, Production Office and Accounting, and Hair, Makeup and Wardrobe — and awarded 67 certificates at Brookdale alone. Thirteen community colleges statewide are now in the partnership network. That's the below-the-line labor supply that will make 2027's Phase 1A opening logistically possible.
Netflix is one project. The build-out around Netflix is three or four more, and every one of them is underwritten, at least in part, by studio demand assumptions. For the full picture of what's reshaping the region, we cover the broader pipeline in our breakdown of major development projects transforming Monmouth County.
| Development | Town | Investment | Residential Units |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix Studios | Oceanport + Eatontown | $900M+ | — |
| Monmouth Square | Eatontown | $500M | 1,000 |
| Liberty Pointe | Eatontown | $66M | 275 |
| Riverwalk Center | Oceanport | Mixed-use leased | — |
Monmouth Square is the biggest adjacent project. Kushner Companies broke ground in May 2024 on a $500 million transformation of the 1960s-era Monmouth Mall into an open-air mixed-use center. The final build includes 990,000 square feet of retail anchored by a new Whole Foods Market, 1,000 residential units (125 designated affordable, with a portion under Kushner's new Livana luxury rental brand), a 40,000-square-foot amenity clubhouse, and an existing 80,000-square-foot RWJBarnabas Health outpatient facility with 30,000 more square feet of medical space planned.
Liberty Pointe addresses the housing gap. Lennar Corporation is demolishing 486 deteriorating Howard Commons military townhomes along Pinebrook and Hope Roads and building 275 new units — single-family homes, townhomes, and 20 affordable rentals — plus a gas station, convenience store, and grocery anchor. The capital investment is $66 million.
Riverwalk Center is the lifestyle anchor right inside the fort gates. Developed by Michael Abboud and Chris Ilvento on a 12-acre waterfront parcel along Oceanport Avenue, the center has already turned on. Skinny Flowers Brewery opened August 1, 2025 in a 6,000-square-foot space with 165 seats. Nicol Rackets (pickleball, padel, physical therapy) opened in April 2025. Playa Bowls, CKO Kickboxing, Olive and Oak Charcuterie, Broadway Chicken, Black Belt America, L'Mer Nails, Stonefit, and Rogue Salon are all leased. The historic 1928 Allison Hall — a former military hospital — is being converted into a boutique hotel and wedding venue under Allison Hospitality Group.
This is where the coverage gets unreliable. The story some outlets are running — Oceanport median prices up 17.8% year-over-year, Eatontown up 13.2%, bidding wars across the board — doesn't hold up against primary market data. Here's what does.
Monmouth County was already structurally tight before Netflix. Statewide, active inventory registered roughly 27,189 listings in March 2026, per closed-sale data, with a 4.0% year-over-year median price increase to $546,700 and 49 median days on market. These are healthy, moderating numbers — not the double-digit appreciation some Monmouth coverage has been implying.
The host-town data is noisier than most articles admit. Oceanport sees roughly four to five home sales per month. At that sample size, a single $1.6 million waterfront closing can swing the monthly median by $200,000 or more. Tinton Falls — a town frequently cited as riding the Netflix wave — actually posted a February 2026 median of $471,000, down 8.5% year-over-year, with 21 median days on market. That's not a market cooling dramatically; it's a small-sample market showing exactly the kind of volatility you'd expect.
What is real: rental demand among construction management, environmental consultants, and early-stage operational leadership already on 12-to-18-month assignments near the site. What's coming: sustained demand for fully furnished turnkey residences once Phase 1A production cycles begin in 2027, when cast and crew start rotating through on project-based timelines. What's already priced in: Oceanport's scarcity, Eatontown's redevelopment tailwinds, and Tinton Falls' school-district stability were all recognized by the local market before Netflix closed.
If you're considering buying near Fort Monmouth in 2026, the correct question isn't "what's the Netflix premium?" It's "what are the fundamentals — commute, schools, condition, lot, proximity to water or transit?" Those are the factors that will still matter in 2030. The Netflix effect shows up slowly, through persistent inventory tightness and a wider buyer pool, not through dramatic monthly price movements.
The Netflix Effect isn't a single market event. It's three different markets responding to the same catalyst in three different ways — and where a buyer or seller sits relative to those rings matters more than any countywide average.
The host municipalities — Oceanport, Eatontown, and Tinton Falls — absorb the direct workforce housing impact. These are the towns where crew, mid-level management, and daily operations staff will want to live. Oceanport carries the scarcity premium. Eatontown carries the redevelopment upside. Tinton Falls carries the suburban stability. Each will get its own deep-dive in this series.
The sanctuary suburbs — Rumson, Fair Haven, Little Silver, Shrewsbury, Red Bank, and further inland Holmdel — absorb the executive and above-the-line demand. Directors, producers, showrunners, and senior Netflix leadership earning $400K–$800K+ aren't buying in Eatontown. They're buying on acreage, near water, with elite schools and genuine privacy.
The coastal entertainment corridor — Long Branch and Asbury Park — absorbs the project-based talent. These markets are being reshaped right now by the rise of fully furnished, turnkey luxury condos and short-term rentals designed for cast and crew working three-to-nine-month production cycles.
Each ring moves on a different timeline. The host towns are moving first, on workforce demand. The sanctuary suburbs will accelerate as 2027 executive relocations get serious. The coastal corridor hits peak demand once production schedules ramp in 2028 and beyond. If you want a county-wide view of how migration patterns are shifting, our analysis of where NYC buyers are moving in New Jersey shows the underlying demand pressure that Netflix is now amplifying.
Netflix is building the campus in phases. Phase 1A — four soundstages on the 39-acre McAfee parcel in Oceanport — is targeted to open in 2027. Phase 1B, which adds eight more soundstages in Eatontown, is scheduled to open in 2028. Demolition of former military structures has been underway since May 2025, and the Mega Parcel closing was finalized on December 5, 2025.
Netflix and the New Jersey Economic Development Authority project 3,500 construction jobs during the build period and 1,500 permanent positions at full operation. That headline number doesn't include indirect employment created by ancillary developments like Monmouth Square, Liberty Pointe, and Riverwalk Center, or the downstream hospitality, retail, and service jobs that will follow a workforce of this scale into the region.
The answer depends more on your fundamentals than on the Netflix timeline. Monmouth County was already an inventory-constrained seller's market before the studio closed, and that structural tightness isn't loosening. If you're buying for a five-to-ten-year hold with genuine requirements for schools, commute, or lot size, 2026 is a reasonable entry point. If you're buying purely to flip on a Netflix premium, the evidence for that premium at current prices is thin, and monthly median swings in small towns like Oceanport are not reliable indicators of real appreciation.
The three host municipalities — Oceanport, Eatontown, and Tinton Falls — will see the most direct workforce housing impact. Oceanport offers scarcity and proximity. Eatontown offers the largest mixed-use redevelopment pipeline in the county. Tinton Falls offers suburban stability and school-district strength. Beyond the host towns, expect sanctuary suburbs like Rumson, Fair Haven, Little Silver, Red Bank, and Holmdel to absorb executive demand, and coastal markets like Long Branch and Asbury Park to see rising demand for fully furnished luxury rentals tied to production schedules.
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.