Maybe the rich are different, as F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed.
A case in point is the housing market for million-dollar second homes in the Hudson Valley, with steady sales even as recession threatens to grip the state.
But, says a Realtor with a quarter-century of experience in the real estate business, when it comes to buying homes, the rich want what everyone else does, an easy path to move in and a nice location.
Twelve homes worth $1million or more sold to date this year in Dutchess County, according to Santo Tambone, CEO of the Mid-Hudson Multiple Listing Service, which is an increase eleven such properties that sold in the same period last year.
In Ulster County, 10 houses worth at least a million dollars sold in the year to date versus eight such homes last year, according to Dorothy Pismopulos, CEO of the Ulster County Board of Realtors.
The big sales came despite prices dropping nationally. During the first quarter of this year, American home prices dropped at the sharpest rate in two decades during the first quarter, according to a Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller report, which said its national home price index fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. That is the biggest drop recorded since the survey”™s inception in 1988.
But the million-dollar sales continue. “We have had a good percentage of those in the last nine months,” said Paula Redmond, owner of Redmond Real Estate, with offices in Millbrook and Pine Plains. She said that over the last nine months, 25 homes have sold in Dutchess County at a price over a million dollars, and 10 of those have been sold for more than $2 million.
She has had a hand in some of those sales, Redmond said, adding that the path to such sales is the same whether it”™s a first-time buyer looking for a starter or a successful entrepreneur looking for a luxury second home, and they ask the same questions.
You”™re going to educate your buyers,” she said. And while comparable sales data are somewhat scarce in the over-a-million category, she said there are examples to point to. And questions about the house, the property, and the area are common in any sale.
Redmond said most of the million-dollar-and-more sales are taking place in northern Dutchess County, a rural area with the type of scenery that enhances property values. She said most of the sales are for second homes. But another common sales element emerged in these sales, she said: ease of moving in. “A turn key house will get more of a premium, because otherwise people feel they have to do too much work to move in,” she said.
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