Residential real estate sales in Westchester and Putnam took a step backward in the second quarter, with the seasonally adjusted rate of sales dropping by 7 percent from the first quarter of 2011.
Through the first six months of the year, combined sales in the two counties are down by 16 percent compared to the first half of 2010, based on the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors (WPAR) Inc.”™s second-quarter residential real estate report.
Through June 30, there have been 2,830 sales in Westchester and 297 in Putnam, compared to 3,386 in Westchester and 345 in Putnam during the first half of 2010.
Gil Mercurio, CEO of the WPAR, which is based in White Plains, largely credited the year-over-year decline to the federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers that expired on June 30, 2010, which he said caused the number of sales for the first half of last year to be significantly inflated.
“It”™s much better than the depths of the recession but it”™s less than the pumped-up market in 2010,” he said.
While first-half 2011 sales were down compared to last year, they were about 35 percent ahead of the sales volume posted in the first half of 2009, when the real estate market was at rock bottom, the report stated.
“Because we have these factors in the market ”“ the recession and the stimulus program ”“ it”™s hard to know what direction anything is going in,” Mercurio said. “You can”™t draw a convincing trend line from 2008 through 2011.”
He attributed the flat real estate market to the widespread uncertainty at the federal government level and said future sales would depend on how questions regarding mortgage interest rates, job growth and tax policy are addressed in Congress and by the state Legislature in Albany.
“All of these negative circumstances at the national level create uncertainty,” Mercurio said, adding that potential homebuyers “feel that this is not a good time to be making large commitments” as a result.
According to the report there were 986 single-family houses sold in Westchester and 122 sold in Putnam during the second quarter, drops of 17.4 percent and 33.7 percent, respectively, from second-quarter 2010 marks.
The weakness of the lower-priced housing market was particularly evident in the report. In Westchester, the sales of condos and co-ops dropped 30.5 percent and 38.1 percent, respectively, from the second quarter of 2010, and in Putnam, condo and co-op sales fell a combined 12.5 percent from the second quarter of last year.
Mercurio said the lower- to middle-income people who typically would be in the market for condos or co-ops have been some of the hardest-hit by the recession.
“They need to be in the real estate market to rejuvenate it but they”™re not,” he said. “In order for this market to really recover we have to see activity amongst the condominiums and the co-ops and people purchasing along that range of price.”
In Westchester, the median sale price for single-family houses was up by 2.5 percent from a year ago, from $607,500 to $622,750, and in Putnam the median price increased by 4.3 percent, from $306,750 to $320,000.
Additionally, the median sale price for single-family houses sold in Westchester increased significantly from the first quarter of 2011, when it was $552,750.
These marks were boosted by the large number of sales for houses valued at $1 million or more, which according to the report accounted for nearly 24 percent of all houses sold in the second quarter.
For both Westchester and Putnam, the median sale prices for condos and co-ops fell from a year ago, again reflecting the strain that has been placed on first-time homebuyers and moderate income buyers by the economy.
The median sale price of a Westchester condo was down by 1.1 percent, from $352,250 to $348,500, and the median sale price of a co-op in Westchester was down by 7.2 percent, from $169,500 to $157,250. In Putnam, the median sale prices of condos and co-ops were down by 1 percent from last year.
A separate report on real estate sales in Westchester released by Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, based in New York City, also pointed to sales of higher-priced properties as one of the driving forces in the area real estate market.
According to that report, the average square footage of houses sold in Westchester during the second quarter of 2011 was 2,236, up 5.9 percent from 2,112 in the same period last year.
