Despite a 25 percent fourth-quarter dip in sales from a year ago, the Westchester County housing market in 2010 improved markedly from what Realtors have called a “horrible” 2009.
Residential sales last year still slightly trailed home purchases in 2008, when the recession first swept through the county”™s previously booming market.
The Empire Access Multiple Listing Service Inc. reported 6,586 deals closed in the county in 2010, a 13.1 percent increase from 2009. The annual sales volume was down less than 1 percent from 2008, but represented a 27 percent decline from 2007, when more than 9,000 housing sales were reported in Westchester.
Single-family leads the way
The rebound last year was strongest for sales of single-family houses, with brokers reporting 4,014 closings, a nearly 20 percent increase from 2009. The single-family market was up about 5 percent from 2008, but about 22 percent below the pre-recession market in 2007.
Sales of condominiums in 2010 rose about 14 percent from 2009, driven by the now-expired federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers. The federal stimulus, though, failed to lift sales of cooperatives ”“ another more affordable market for first-time buyers ”“ above the volume in 2009, when the credit first took effect. There were 1,266 co-ops sold in the county last year, two fewer than in 2009 and a nearly 18 percent decline from 2008.
The tax credit program, which applied to home purchases that closed by last Sept. 30, seemed a short-lived stimulant in the Westchester market. Condominium sales in the recently ended fourth quarter dropped more than 26 percent from a year earlier. Co-op apartment sales in the same quarter were about 38 percent below the fourth quarter in 2009. Fourth-quarter closings on single-family houses were down 18 percent from the previous year, though that 2010 volume was up 11.6 percent from the same quarter in 2008.
Not a steady climb
The median sale price of a single-family house in Westchester was $630,000 in 2010, up $50,000 or 8.6 percent from the 2009 median. The market, though, did not see a steady climb in prices over the last year, as fourth-quarter sales dropped to a median of $576,500 after soaring to a record-setting median price of $730,250 in the third quarter.
Tracking the year”™s erratic price shifts in his end-of-year market analysis, Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors CEO P. Gilbert Mercurio said they were largely caused by high-end property sales of $1 million and up. Those properties “have fared better from a sales volume aspect than have lower-priced properties, and that fact has tended to elevate the overall average price while masking a lower level of price performance among the more moderately priced properties,” he said in the recent report from WPAR and its Empire Access Multiple Listing Service.
High-end sales accounted for 28 percent of the county”™s single-family housing market in the record-setting third quarter, but only 16 percent in the fourth quarter.
Mercurio said a 3 percent increase in the fourth-quarter median sale price for single-family houses from a year ago probably was a true price appreciation. The median sale price for condominiums also rose 3 percent in the fourth quarter, to $359,000. The fourth-quarter median price for co-op sales was $172,250, up about 2 percent from 2009.
Remedies to foreclosures
Foreclosures in the county were down in 2010 from historically high levels in 2008 and 2009, according to Westchester County Clerk Timothy C. Idoni.
A total of 598 foreclosures were completed last year, down from 735 in 2009 and 1,304 in 2008. Mercurio said those foreclosures did not seriously damage the housing market with excess inventory and depressed sale prices.
Only about one in four of the 2,485 foreclosure petitions filed in the county last year ended in court judgments against homeowners. Idoni said that indicates “homeowners are finding remedies to foreclosures or banks have slowed the process due to recent findings of improper paperwork procedures, including robo-signing, in the past three years.”
“I get two or three phone calls a week from people (potential buyers) looking for short sales and foreclosures in Westchester,” said Biagio “Gino” Bello, a broker at Houlihan Lawrence Real Estate in White Plains. “I think you”™ll see a lot more in 2011. I think a lot of the foreclosures and short sales, people bought time. There was a lot of time bought over the last two years.”
In 2011, said Bello, “Basically I think we”™re going to see sales on the rise,” fueled by low interest rates “hovering at 4.75 percent” and home prices that “have come down significantly. People see value in the value that”™s out there now.”
Bello said he expects prices to drop about 5 percent in 2011.
”˜Very long, flat period”™
At Houlihan Lawrence, the county”™s leading brokerage in multimillion-dollar house sales, “We”™re optimistic,” said Elizabeth D. Nunan, vice president of its global business development center in Armonk. “The end of 2010, there seemed to be an uptick in the business.”
“We”™re cautiously optimistic,” Nunan added. “We don”™t see 2011 being that much greater than 2010.”
In Briarcliff Manor, J. Philip Faranda, broker-owner at J. Philip Real Estate L.L.C., does not expect the county”™s housing market to recover any time soon.
“We”™re at the beginning of another very long, flat period, barring any economic calamity,” he said.
“History repeats itself,” said Faranda. “When we recovered from the big slowdown in the ”˜80s, it took about 10 years to get back the good business. I think we”™re in the same situation.”
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