Magnolia Square under construction at 375 Terhune Road on September 24. Six of the development's units are deed-restricted affordable condos, which are not planned for availability until November 2026. Photo by Myra Chowdhery.
Editor's note, October 6, 2026: This article originally ran under the headline "Six Homes, 3,304 Applicants, and No Outreach." After publication, CGP&H's Senior Affordable Housing Manager, Matt DiLauri, said the sentence I quoted, "Outreach for affordable homes was not done prior to the lottery deadline," referred to contacting individual applicants on the waiting list about specific units, not to marketing the lottery. He described an affirmative marketing campaign that ran from May 29 to August 5, which is now included below.
I have changed the headline and removed the places where the article stated, in my own words, that no outreach was conducted. The quote itself and the question I asked are unchanged. I should have gone back to CGP&H to confirm what they meant before putting it in a headline as fact.
From June 3rd to August 5th, the waitlist of Magnolia Square’s six affordable condo units has reached 3,304 people within just the first round of the lottery. CGP&H noted in an email, “The number of applicants increases each day.”
Are all these applicants solely awaiting the six condo units for Magnolia Square? When asked this question, CGP&H responded with, “At this time, Magnolia Square is our only ownership opportunity in Princeton.” Essentially yes, 3,304 applicants are specifically for Magnolia Square.
That is until ownership opportunities grow.
They add, “If another ownership opportunity arises in that municipality, those lottery numbers would be considered for both developments.”
To really understand why Magnolia Square affordable units are so sought after, it's important to compare them to the regular market-rate townhouses. In comparison, market-rate three-bedroom townhomes at Magnolia Square are 2,453 to 2,504 square feet and were listed starting at $1.47 million when Toll Brothers announced the development on June 17th. The three-bedroom affordable condo units in the same development are priced at $156,288 and $245,553. That's roughly 1/10th to 1/6th of the market-rate townhouses.
With such a massive dip in price compared to a regular market-rate one, qualifying for these units comes down to household income.
Within the community, there's been one lingering question about affordable unit eligibility: the missing middle. These are families who earn too much to qualify for a moderate-income unit, but not enough to afford one of the market-rate townhomes next door.
Meanwhile, for the 3,304 who do qualify, the first round of the lottery has already occurred. But what does that mean?
In short, a select group of high-priority applicants now have the first opportunity to purchase the available units.
For affordable units the priority order starts off with a random number given to each applicant that applied by August 5th. Then a few things can move an applicant higher in rank such as living or working in Region 4, and having a household size that matches the unit's bedroom count.
Once the final rank of applicants is decided then the first set of numbers are given the opportunity to buy a unit. This is what CGP&H is doing right now, they noted, "Random selection has taken place for Princeton ownership opportunities," and they're in the process of "currently contacting applicants for units at Magnolia Square." However the ranks truly do not define who will end up with the affordable unit. Many factors and circumstances make the first set of ranked applicants either ineligible or the applicants themselves choose to opt out. That's when the opportunity is given to the next applicant ranked.
So what about applicants that registered late? CGP&H said, “Applicants are still able to join the waiting list, but they will not be assigned a lottery number." This means for those applicants there is no rank assigned. Only when the rank of applicants is exhausted will they give the opportunity for the people who joined after August 5th for a unit on a first come first serve basis. That said, there's a caveat for these applicants: CGP&H can invoke 'random selection at any time,' bypassing the first-come-first-serve order entirely.
These findings were fromCGP&H’s published general guidance on how waiting list order is determined, but they did not respond to repeated inquiries about the methodology used for Magnolia Square specifically.
As shown, 3,304 people await on the waitlist and there is one unit available for very low income, three units for low income and two units for moderate income. The first round of the lottery has already happened and CGP&H is reaching out to applicants right now. But just months earlier, the town learned something relevant: on July 13, the 2025 community needs assessment was presented to the council and shared to the public. Within that assessment and based on the community's responses the findings reported that there was “An awareness gap.” Essentially, while barriers like language have gone down, informational ones have worsened. When the time came to use services or find them, people didn't know where to go or what to do. In the last article, there was the question of whether true implementation of this finding will be carried out within the community.
Hence, to find out if Magnolia Square truly did carry out those measures, the question was put to CGP&H:
Before August 5th, was there any outreach or awareness effort specific to Magnolia Square, or help available for people applying, whether from your office or an outside organization?
CGP&H responded
“Outreach for affordable homes was not done prior to the lottery deadline. We are currently contacting applicants for units at Magnolia Square. We are the only administrative agent for that development.”
Toll Brothers, the developer, did not respond to a request for comment on whether they had any role in marketing the affordable units.
After publication, CGP&H's Senior Affordable Housing Manager, Matt DiLauri, said that sentence referred to contacting individual applicants on the waiting list about specific units, not to marketing the lottery itself. He described an affirmative marketing campaign that ran from May 29 to August 5: a listing on the New Jersey Housing Resource Center, newspaper advertisements in the Asbury Park Press and the Trentonian on June 28, direct mail to area employers and to the Fair Share Housing Center, the Latino Action Network, the NAACP and Princeton CARES, social media posts in English and Spanish, and notices posted at county libraries and administration buildings across Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean counties.
Magnolia Square affordable condo units weren't exactly hidden though. In terms of marketing, Princeton did post flyers in English and Spanish, even a phone number for people without email. But the assessment's whole point wasn't just that people didn't know Magnolia Square existed. It was that even the people who did know still needed someone to walk them through actually applying.
So what happened to that implementation?
July 13th to August 5th. Three weeks.
In an interview with Subuhi Asheer from Firefly Community Research who conducted the assessment surveys and crafted the final assessment available to the community, Asheer was asked about the timeline:
When will implementation occur and when can we see the impacts of it?
She replied, "It's longer term because there's a little more work to be done to understand what needs to change, how it needs to change, and how we can get developers and stakeholders on board to make it more seamless."
In terms of more onsite navigation Subuhi Asheer talked about having more human service staff out in the community stating, “things like actually having human service staff out in the community and perhaps rotating between places like housing developments."
Ultimately, Magnolia Square has seen significant demand from the public, with 3,304 applicants on the waitlist and more arriving daily. Yet, according to the town’s flyer these six units are not planned for availability until November 2026. So as the countdown to that move-in date begins, the Magnolia Square development stands as a live case study of the status quo. So the question now is, when does that change?
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