A falling inventory of housing listed on the Westchester County market carried into the first quarter this year, increasing competition among prospective buyers. Sale prices, though, have not risen dramatically in the tightened market, according to the recent quarterly sales report from the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors (HGAR) in White Plains.
“Inventory is literally the key component of the market as I see it,” said Diane Cummins, president-elect of the four-county Realtors association and a broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate who manages the company”™s Somers and Katonah offices. “It”™s what is driving us right now.”
Especially in the more commuter-convenient communities south of Interstate 287, “There”™s a feeding frenzy happening now” for single-family homes that is reflected in sales numbers and bid offers. With as many as 10 to 12 prospects eyeing the same home, some buyers are waiving inspection, appraisal and mortgage contingencies when signing purchase contracts, she said.
Cummins said the frenzied demand has been seen in Larchmont, Rye, Mamaroneck, Bronxville “and even into White Plains.”
“Some of these marketplaces, the inventory is so scarce, the aberration we have known in the market in these last years is really closing,” she said. With buyers re-entering the market, “Prices are rising, but at a moderate, appropriate rate” that does not threaten to balloon into another market bubble, she said.
HGAR reported an 18.8 percent drop in total housing inventory in the county at the end of the first quarter from a year ago. The 3,080 single-family homes listed at the start of April represented a 20 percent decrease from the previous year.
Realtors participating in the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service reported closing 775 sales of single-family houses in Westchester in the first quarter, a 6.2 percent increase from a year ago.
Condominiums, demand for which has risen in the county since the housing recession of 2008 and 2009, have continued to sell well this year. The 210 condos sold in the first quarter represented a 11.7 percent increase from the first quarter of 2012.
First-quarter sales of cooperatives rose 8.1 percent from the previous year.
Overall, residential brokers reported 1,341 sales closed in the first quarter, a 7.2 percent increase from the first three months of 2012.
The first quarter median price of a single-family home in Westchester was $515,000, up 1.9 percent from a year ago. The average sale price, though, dropped 2 percent to $710,633.
HGAR CEO Richard Haggerty in the first-quarter report said the increased market activity among first-time buyers and others who see a chance to buy affordably priced housing in an expensive market “is having the effect of making the pricing structure look weak or even decreasing from quarter to quarter.” Yet house values are not declining, he said.
Haggerty said the bulk of the market “has strongly shifted to the moderate and lower priced properties” in the county, which results in lower average prices.
In Westchester, sales of single-family homes priced at $1 million or more amounted to 16 percent of total first-quarter sales. That is the same percentage of high-end sales as a year ago “but well below the level of 20 percent or higher that prevailed in prior years,” he noted.
Jonathan J. Miller, author of the quarterly Elliman Report for Douglas Elliman Real Estate, tracked first-quarter results in Westchester”™s luxury market, the upper 10 percent of single-family house sales. He reported the median price of $1,793,750 for 78 luxury homes sold was a 16.1 percent drop from a year ago.
Miller in the first-quarter Elliman report said the pace of decline in the inventory of single-family houses in Westchester “is accelerating.” The dwindling supply coupled with rising demand “has made the market feel much tighter.”
With renewed interest from buyers, Cummins said, some homeowners “think we”™re going to go back to what we had” in house values before the recession. Some are setting asking prices on their listed homes with that expectation.
“You can”™t put your house on for that escalated price,” she said. “It will still sit. This is still an opportunity market for buyers.”
“I think the market is healthy,” Cummins said. “The market is not crazy. The feeding frenzy is not everywhere.”
“I feel this is a rosy market. I think there”™s lots of room to recover more.”
