At the Shore, many homes retained value after a wild ride

If you have the money - and that means cash - you can buy your dream house at the Jersey Shore. If you don't, as a prospective vacation-home owner you're being squeezed even harder by the same financial institutions that tightened credit for purchases of primary residences.

The higher the price, "the greater the likelihood the buyer is paying cash for the property," said Paul Leiser of Avalon Realty. "A $7 million sale is far more likely to be a cash deal than a $1 million sale."

Like many places these days, Avalon, long a seaside favorite of the well-to-do, isn't seeing a lot of home sales, period. But those that have occurred have been high enough in value to push the median price up 321 percent since 2005, an Econsult Corp. analysis of transactions in 13 Shore zip codes in Atlantic and Cape May Counties from April 1, 2005, through June 30, 2011, shows.

In comparison, the median price in high-end Stone Harbor is up a modest 87 percent, according to the analysis, conducted by Econsult vice president Kevin Gillen along with a broad examination of home prices in the eight-county Philadelphia region based on 376,257 sales in that period.

(Median is the middle number: Half the houses sold for more, half for less.)

Many Shore points that are traditional vacation destinations for Philadelphia-area residents did not fare all that badly in the housing downturn, the analysis showed, with one caveat:

Though almost all the communities retained the value they had in 2005, Stone Harbor alone consistently held onto median-price gains - from 2005 through 2007, when the U.S. housing bubble burst, then through to June 30 of this year.

Avalon's median price rose 437 percent between 2005 and 2007, for example, then ebbed 22 percent by June 30.

Longport's median price rose 16 percent from 2005 to 2007, then fell 21 percent from 2007 to second-quarter 2011, for a loss of 9 percent over the full analysis period.

A lot of developers and marginal buyers had banked on price appreciation in Wildwood zip code 08260, which also includes North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest. But the median price there rose just 2 percent from 2005 to 2007 - from $330,000 to $334,975 - then fell 34 percent from 2007 to second-quarter 2011, ending up at $222,375.

Many Wildwood developers were forced to abandon projects. Others brought in auction companies to try to reset the market and sell enough condos to stay ahead of foreclosure actions.