First-quarter housing sales in Westchester County were down 5 percent from a year ago, when since-expired federal tax credits for homebuyers and sellers still stimulated some market activity here.
First-quarter median sale prices also dropped from a year ago for all residential property types in the county. The median price for a single-family home reached its lowest level since the market hit bottom in the recession in early 2009.
Real estate offices affiliated with the Empire Access Multiple Listing Service Inc. reported 720 sales of existing single-family homes in the first quarter, a nearly 5 percent drop from a year ago.
Of the county”™s total quarterly sales of 1,247 units, co-operatives saw the largest decline at nearly 9 percent. Sales of two-family to four-family houses dropped 3.6 percent. The 179 condominium closings in the first three months of 2011 was only one less than the number sold in the first quarter last year.
The median sale price of a single-family house in Westchester dropped nearly 8 percent, to $552,750, from the first quarter a year ago. The condo market saw the largest price decline, about 11 percent, with a median price of $325,000.
Prices overall are about 15 percent lower than at the top of the market in 2006 and 2007, according to the listing service.
Adjusted for seasonal market trends, the county”™s first-quarter sales pace amounts to an annual rate of about 6,470 residential sales, the listing service reported. That is up 10 percent from the fourth-quarter rate in 2010 but down about 5 percent from the first quarter last year.
A year ago, first-quarter sales of single-family houses in Westchester were up nearly 78 percent from the slow first quarter of 2009, while condo sales rose by 37 percent. Brokers attributed the better market to a combination of buyer-friendly prices, low mortgage interest rates and increasing buyer confidence in the economy rather than the effects of the federal tax-credit stimulus.
In his quarterly market analysis for the listing service, Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors CEO P. Gilbert Mercurio said two distinct markets divided 2010, when the tax-credit program “inflated” sales volume in the first half of the year. With the government incentive program expired for first-time homebuyers, volume in the second half “exposed the underlying weakness of the market,” said Mercurio.
Sales performance to date this year has “split the difference” between those two markets of 2010, he said in the report.
The county”™s million-dollar-plus homes over the last six months have had less impact on the market”™s average house price. They made up 19 percent of sales this year and 16 percent of sales in the fourth quarter of 2010. In prior quarters, high-end sales normally accounted for 20 percent to more than 28 percent of sales, according to the listing service.
Westchester house prices in the first quarter averaged $760,788, down 3.4 percent from a year ago.
The county”™s end-of-quarter residential market inventory was 6,667 units, up 1.5 percent from the end of the first quarter last year. Listings of single-family houses were up about 4 percent, while the stock of condominiums on the market dropped by about 14 percent.
Mercurio in his analysis called the first-quarter results “encouraging” in a “predominantly negative environment for real estate.” In the post-stimulus market, they are “a useful baseline against which future market-driven sales rates can be measured,” he said.
