With a very special neighbor expected to make frequent weekend experiences this summer, will the local real estate market experience a Trump Effect? Watch video
Residents of Bedminster are used to getting a blank look whenever they tell people the name of their hometown, followed by a quizzical, "Where?"
They usually answer the question by explaining it's near Basking Ridge, or Bernardsville, or the Bridgewater mall.
With a very special neighbor expected to make frequent weekend visits this summer, however, that may change.
Less certain, though, is whether the local real estate market will experience a Trump Effect.
As Donald Trump quietly concluded his first getaway weekend in New Jersey since taking office, will his presence bring a certain cachet to the region, or be a turn-off to customers who worry about the commotion it might bring?
"We're used to him, you know," said Debra Groendyk, a real estate agent manning an open house of a property with 38 acres smack in the middle of horse country.
"We all know the different helicopters by now: 'Oh, there's the Trump helicopter. Oh, there's the Forbes helicopter,'" she said.
Trump stayed at his club Sunday. Unlike his last visit, shortly after last fall's election, he did not venture off the gated site to attend services at the nearby Lamington Presbyterian Church.
Motorcade and support vehicles for President Donald Trump arrive at Trump National Golf Course last Thursday. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) He was expected to depart around dinnertime; a Federal Aviation Administration flight bulletin indicates airspace around the Morristown Airport would be impacted by a VIP flight around 7 p.m.
While feelings about Trump still run high on both sides, so far they don't seem to be rubbing off on town itself, several agents said.
"I've not had a single customer say, 'Oh, Trump lives there! I don't want to live there!," said Groendyk. Nor has she had any customers express a preference for Bedminster-based solely on Trump's use of his golf club there as a weekend retreat.
Any commotion was at a minimum this weekend. While there were planned protests on Saturday, just one person showed up briefly on Sunday. There were police cars parked at the front and side entrances of the golf club, but no road closures.
Instead, the traffic jams and parking headaches were a few miles away, at the fabulously popular rummage sale run by the Somerset County Visiting Nurses Association.
In the section of town where Trump converted a Georgian estate into Trump National golf club, development is mostly large horse farms interspersed with homes built on the zoned minimum of 10 acres. Any tendency to worry about one's neighbors - presidential or not - is muted by the privacy afforded by all that acreage.
Due south of the gated golf course, on the other side of I-78, Robbie Melton was showing a property in the half-million-dollar range - or what passes for the low end of the market for single-family houses.
Although it was too soon to tell, he said, he speculated the president's selection of Bedminster over Manhattan's Trump Tower could be advantageous to the real estate market in one respect: While Bedminster is seen as a safe town, the presence of all that extra security during a presidential visit can only boost that reputation.
For Angela Olsen, a Scotch Plains residents exploring homes for sale in the Somerset Hills neck of the woods, the notion that the president could have any possible impact on that hunt gave her pause. She had made the association between the president's visit and the town she was exploring just the day before, she said.
"Hopefully it won't drive up prices for people who just want to live here for other reasons," she said.
One change everyone agrees is likely: they'll no longer have to give a long geography lesson whenever they mention Bedminster.
"He's putting it on the map," said Melton, "and maybe that's good."
Kathleen O'Brien may be reached at kobrien@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @OBrienLedger. Find NJ.com on Facebook.