A two-bedroom house on Millburn's Sunset Drive sold for $965,000 last year after a bidding war with more than a dozen other potential buyers, and it is about to reemerge as a six-bedroom, six-and-a-half-bath home worth roughly $3 million. The builder behind the transformation, Vantage Builders LLC, is now nearing completion on the more than 5,900-square-foot replacement house at 7 Sunset Drive, sitting on a 0.26-acre lot in one of New Jersey's priciest suburbs.
Vantage Builders purchased the two-bedroom home in February 2025, according to Jersey Digs, outbidding more than a dozen other potential buyers to land the property. Property records reviewed by Zillow show the home was listed on Feb. 19, 2025 for $799,000, went pending within nine days, and officially closed for $965,000 on July 17, 2025 — a premium of roughly 21 percent over its asking price. The sale was orchestrated by the Saritte Harel Team, per Jersey Digs, which is now also marketing the finished replacement home.
Before it was demolished, the original structure carried a 2025 municipal tax assessed value of $555,600 and an annual property tax bill of $11,218, per Zillow's tax records — up from $9,824 in 2016. That modest tax bill is set to look very different once the new home is assessed, given that Millburn homeowners already paid an average property tax bill of $26,292 in 2025 on an average assessed home value of $1,302,529, according to Patch.
What's Replacing the Old Two-Bedroom House
The new house will span two stories and include a two-car garage, white oak flooring throughout the foyer, dining room, kitchen and powder rooms, and recessed LED lighting, according to Jersey Digs. Every room will have fully built-out closets, while the kitchen features quartz countertops and Thermador appliances. A mudroom with custom storage and a pantry with built-in cabinetry round out the main living areas.
Outside, the home will offer Hardie shingles, board-and-batten siding, Azek trim and Pella triple-paned windows, the outlet reports. A covered patio and second-floor balcony will add 350 square feet of outdoor living space. The basement, meanwhile, will feature nine-foot ceilings, a wet bar and a wine fridge alongside a family room.
Millburn's Teardown Math Isn't Unique
Vantage Builders has taken on similar projects elsewhere in the region, including past redevelopments at 1 Rodman in Millburn and 501 Park Street in Montclair, along with an active project at 16 Dale Drive in Chatham, according to The Saritte Harel Team. The firm routinely builds homes exceeding 5,000 square feet with high-end mechanical and interior finishes, the listing notes.
A comparable deal played out in nearby Short Hills in March 2025, when the Saritte Harel Team arranged the sale of a 2,385-square-foot residence that sold in just five days and closed more than $620,000 above asking, per Jersey Digs. That buyer intended to demolish the existing home and build a larger, more modern property, echoing the plan at Sunset Drive.
Chrissy Schwartz said Essex County is extremely attractive to builders and end users, according to Jersey Digs, adding that high property prices justify significant investment and make the market competitive. Her comments track with broader county data: single-family home sellers in Essex County received an average of 111.9% of their original listing price in July 2026, up 1.2 percentage points year-over-year and the highest list-to-sale ratio of any New Jersey county, according to a New Jersey REALTORS report.
A Shrinking Supply of Land to Build On
Part of what's driving builders toward teardowns rather than new subdivisions is a shortage of available land. Single-family housing supply in Essex County dropped 9.3% year-over-year to just 633 available homes in July 2026, leaving a constrained 2.3-month supply and a median of only 26 days on the market before a sale, per the same New Jersey REALTORS data — well short of the roughly six months of supply that's considered a balanced market. The Saritte Harel Team has said construction firms are pursuing replacement projects specifically because of that shortage of available land for high-end new construction. According to the NJOIT Open Data Center, New Jersey’s construction-permit dataset includes demolition permits and is processed and updated monthly, offering a way to track replacement-home activity statewide.
Millburn's average home value reached $1.3 million at the end of July, an increase of nearly 10 percent year over year, Jersey Digs reports. That fits with figures from CENTURY 21 Preferred, which found the luxury single-family home market in Millburn and Short Hills — homes priced between $2 million and $10 million-plus — reached a median sales price of $2.537 million in June 2026, a 36.2% year-over-year jump across 32 closed transactions. High demand in the area is driven largely by proximity to the Midtown Direct train line into New York City, per the same report.
Zoning Rules Try to Keep Pace
Millburn Township has been adjusting its own rulebook in response to the wave of teardown-and-rebuild projects. Officials updated municipal zoning codes through Ordinances 2645-23, 2646-23 and Ordinance 2756-26 in June 2026 to refine residential Floor Area Ratio definitions and enforce prevailing front yard setbacks aimed at controlling home size and preserving neighborhood scale, according to the Township of Millburn. The changes followed Master Plan recommendations to monitor the impact of teardowns on neighborhood character.
Those larger assessments matter beyond any single buyer's budget. State tax tables published in early 2026 show 51.2% of Millburn's property tax bill funds the local school district, while 26.4% supports municipal operations and 22.5% goes to Essex County, per Patch — meaning the jump from an $11,218 tax bill to whatever the finished Sunset Drive home eventually gets assessed at will flow directly into a district serving roughly 5,000 students across eight public schools.
