Luxury home sales on the rise

Sales of multimillion-dollar homes in Westchester County are on the rise at the start of the new year, with some buyers in 2011 paying record or near-record sums that still were below sellers”™ listed prices.

Notable recent sales in the over-$5-million residential market  include Holly Hill in Briarcliff Manor, the approximately 65-acre estate and 10,000-square-foot, 13-bedroom stone manor of the late Brooke Astor. Administrators of her estate, which include JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., in December sold the 298 Scarborough Road property for $6.45 million.

The new owner, listed as Holly Hill L.L.C. in Dobbs Ferry, paid a little less than half of the asking price of $12.9 million when the property went on the market in late 2008. The price was lowered a few times, dropping to $7.5 million last August.

“The house itself is really something extraordinary,” said Tracy Isaacs, broker in the Scarsdale office of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage who represented the buyer in the deal. Houlihan Lawrence represented the seller. “I think it”™s a great price for the buyer, but it needs a lot of work ”¦ It was state of the art in 1965.”

Holly Hill”™s buyer, a privacy-seeking hedge fund manager, plans to use the riverside estate as his family residence after extensive renovations to the 1927 home and other buildings.

 

Foreign buyers in the market

Broker Jason Wilson, who manages the Scarsdale office of Julia B. Fee Sotheby”™s International Realty, said hedge fund managers and other financial professionals drove the county”™s luxury-home market in 2011, which saw “a lot of cash” from savvy investors in home real estate.

Overseas buyers too have made their presence felt in the market.

In Scarsdale, an undisclosed buyer moving here from a foreign country last month paid $10.88 million in an all-cash deal for 9 Heathcote Road, an 11,600-square-foot, seven-bedroom home in Scarsdale”™s prestigious Heathcote Estate neighborhood. Built in 2006 by Cal Petrescu Architecture & Design in Scarsdale, the Georgian Colonial home in 2010 was named the county”™s most beautiful home by Westchester Home Magazine.

The sale was the second highest in Westchester in 2011 and also the second highest since 2008 for sales listed with the region”™s Empire Access Multiple Listing Service. Brokers said it was topped only by an approximately $11.6-million house sale last September at Milton Point in Rye.

The final sale price in Scarsdale was nearly $1.9 million below the $12.75-million list price for the home on 2.5 acres.

The foreign buyer was represented by broker Lisa Pitt, vice president at Paddington Stone Realty in White Plains. Mary Katchis and Dawn Knief, brokers at Julia B. Fee Sotheby”™s International Realty in Scarsdale, were the listing agents.

 

Buyer confidence still is lagging

For the brokerage team of Katchis and Knief, 2011 was a record sales year in Scarsdale and surrounding communities. At the market”™s peak in 2007, they were listing agents for the highest reported house sale in Scarsdale, a $12-million deal for a Heathcote Road property not listed with the Multiple Listing Service.

The near-record Scarsdale sale “is a good indicator as far as the luxury market is concerned,” said Michelle Coletti, president of Paddington Stone Realty. That market “has definitely picked up speed.”

“New York City and Westchester are blue-chip,” Coletti said.

“They”™re the first to rebound after a market like this. Everyone says slowly but surely, stabilization is happening.”

Coletti, though, said buyer confidence in the housing market still is lagging. “It”™s almost a generational thing,” she said. Among the younger generation, confidence in the American dream of buying a home of one”™s own “has been shaken a little bit” by what Coletti called “repeated exposure to sensationalized negative media.”

That lagging buyer confidence “has driven up rental demand and rental prices, especially in Westchester,” she said. In White Plains, the county”™s top rental market, four downtown luxury apartment buildings all have occupancy rates at or above 95 percent, she said.

The county”™s housing market “definitely is a lot more positive now than it was at the end of last year,” said Coletti.

 

”˜Value-conscious buyers”™

At Houlihan Lawrence in Bronxville, Chief Operating Officer Christopher Meyers said the Holly Hill and Heathcote Estate sales “seem to be a result of liquidity at the high end of the market ”“ above $5 million in particular.”

Houlihan Lawrence had 15 house sales over $5 million in 2011, three more than in 2010. At the market”™s peak four or five years ago, “We were doing 25 to 30,” he said.

Meyers said Houlihan Lawrence has eight housing transactions in contract that should close by the first quarter of 2012. A year ago, only one house sale was in the works at the start of 2011.

“The strength right now in the market is above $5 million and under $500,000,” said Meyers, with the lower-end market showing a 40 percent year-over-year increase in pending deals.

The luxury market for homes in the $2 million to $4 million range is down about 10 percent from a year ago, he said, perhaps due to a decline in Wall Street bonuses in 2011.

“The bonus buyers, that”™s kind of their sweet spot, the $2 million to $5 million range,” Meyers said.

“We”™re trading today at prices that are equivalent to about 2003,” said Meyers. Those prices have drawn “value-conscious buyers” into the market. “Today we”™re not seeing a lot of emotional buys from buyers,” he said.