Increased demand for co-op apartments drove an 8 percent rise in residential real estate sales in Westchester County in the fourth quarter of 2014 and kept the county market from a decline in overall housing sales for the year.
While sales of single-family houses dropped nearly 1 percent last year from 2013, the median sale price of a Westchester house rose 4.1 percent for the year, to $635,000, according to the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors. HGAR reports deals from Realtors in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties participating in the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service.
Overall housing sales in the county totaled 8,609 units in 2014, a 0.6 percent increase from 2013. Condominium sales, which totaled slightly fewer than 1,100 for the year, dropped 5.2 percent from 2013. The 1,709 co-ops sold in the county last year amounted to an 11.3 percent increase from 2013.
- Source: Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors
The county”™s smaller market for two-family to four-family houses had 409 sales in 2014, a 2.9 percent drop from the previous year.
Brokers reported 479 co-ops sold in the county in last year”™s fourth quarter, a 24.4 percent increase from fourth-quarter co-op sales in 2013. The fourth-quarter median sale price for a co-op rose slightly from $145,000 in 2013 to $146,000 last year. For all of 2014, the median sale price of co-operatives was $147,500, down 1.7 percent from 2013.
Brokers at Westchester Real Estate Inc., an association of independent real estate companies based in Eastchester, in their fourth-quarter market report said home prices continue to rise in most geographical market sectors of the county but at “a slower and more sustainable pace” than in the last couple of years.
In the luxury homes market, Bronxville led the county in last year”™s fourth quarter with a median price of $1.93 million for six homes sold there, according to the Westchester Real Estate Inc. report. Scarsdale, where 42 houses were sold from October through December, had the county”™s next highest median sale price at $1,512,500. Single-family houses in Purchase sold in the fourth quarter at a median price of $1,487,500.
Member brokers of Westchester Real Estate said house sales in many Westchester communities are still constrained by the lack of inventory, especially in the most popular price ranges.
The Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service at the end of 2014 had 2,196 listings for single-family houses in Westchester, a 5.6 percent decrease from the start of 2014. Co-op listings fell to 937 at the close of 2014, a 22.5 percent reduction since the start of the year in that growing market for buyers.
Sales of condominiums also surged in the fourth quarter, with 307 closings that amounted to a 13.7 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2013. The median sale price of a condo rose 2.8 percent for the quarter, to $335,000. For the year, the mean sale price of a Westchester condominium rose 2 percent to $350,000.
In the four-county area served by the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors, brokers reported 14,169 residential deals closed in 2014, a 1.1 percent increase from 2013. Last year”™s sales volume for the four-county region was the highest in any year since the 2008-2009 recession, according to HGAR.
