Severe winter weather had a chilling effect on second-quarter housing sales in Westchester County and the lower Hudson Valley, according to analysts and brokers in the market. Whether the double-digit decline in sales in Westchester from the second quarter in 2013 was largely a weather-induced aberration or indicative of another trend in the market should be clear after the current third quarter, they said.
Realtors in the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service reported 3,195 closings on residential properties in the second quarter across Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties, a 9.2 percent decline from the region”™s sales volume in the same quarter last year. Westchester and Orange counties showed the steepest declines, at 12 percent and 12.2 percent respectively.
Only Rockland County had a second-quarter increase in property transactions, with 463 sales of single-family houses, condominiums, cooperatives and two- to four-family dwellings representing a 6.2 percent year-to-year rise, according to the Hudson Gateway listing service.
In Westchester, the region”™s largest residential market, sales of single-family houses dropped 13.5 percent from a year ago, with 1,232 homes sold from April through June this year, the listing service reported.
Douglas Elliman Real Estate in its quarterly report charted 1,194 closings on single-family homes in the county, a 16.7 percent decrease from the second quarter of 2013.
Miller Samuel Inc., the consultant preparing the Elliman Report, noted that severe winter weather pushed first-quarter pending sales into the second quarter. The result was a spike in residential contract activity despite the drop in sale closings. Elliman said contracts on single-family homes rose 3.9 percent from the second quarter last year and nearly 52 percent from this year”™s first quarter, well above the 35.5 percent average increase from the first to second quarters of 2012 and 2013.
The Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service had 3,913 single-family houses listed for sale in Westchester at the end of June, a 5.7 percent increase from a year ago, when the county”™s listing inventory hit a low mark.
The quarterly decline in sales volume in Westchester was not accompanied by a drop in the median sale price for a single-family house, which rose slightly to $651,250 from $650,000 in the second quarter last year, according to the listing service.
Elliman reported no year-to-year change from the county”™s overall $650,000 median sale price for a single-family house. However, median prices for three-bedroom and four-bedroom homes rose 13.4 percent and 16.8 respectively from a year ago, according to Elliman”™s analyst.
Elliman also noted the average listing discount in Westchester for a single-family house dropped to 2.7 percent this year from 7.2 percent in the second quarter last year.
P. Gilbert Mercurio, consultant and former CEO of the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors, in his quarterly analysis for HGAR said the National Association of Realtors and other data providers and analysts “ascribe at least some of the slowdown in sales here and nationally to exceptionally difficult winter weather conditions that discouraged prospective purchasers from getting out and researching properties of interest.”
While this region “undoubtedly” felt some of that chilling effect on house hunting and sales, Mercurio added, “in our case there may also have been an equal or even larger effect from a simple market correction of the fast pace of sales in 2013 and the first quarter of 2014.”
“I was not surprised by these numbers” for the second quarter after a first quarter that ended with “fantastic numbers,” said Diana Cummins, a broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate and president of the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors.
In a winter of heavy snowstorms and ice, both sellers and buyers shied away from the market, she said. Sellers held off on listing their properties for sale in unfavorable conditions. “Every time they turned around, there was a blizzard,” Cummins said. Sellers also feared accidents to prospective buyers on their snow- and ice-covered properties. “Everybody had a reason just to hold back a bit,” she said.
At the start of the third quarter, “I”™m beginning to believe that we”™re seeing a return of seasonality” in the Westchester market “that I haven”™t seen in a few years,” Cummins said. “July is really quiet because people are away”¦I”™m kind of encouraged. I think we might be seeing people feeling good about life again” following the recession “and taking a vacation.”
“I do think after the third quarter we”™re going to see a little more semblance of a pattern” in the housing market, she said. “I think the next quarter is going to be the telling quarter. It tells us whether this was just an aberration because of the really bad winter.”
Or has the middle class come to realize they can not afford to live in Westchester and Long Island because of the current and or worrisome future taxes.