Lower housing prices and historically low interest rates spurred a third-quarter single-digit increase in housing sales in Westchester County from a year ago, according to officials at the Empire Access Multiple Listing Service Inc.
Increased sales activity in New York City could be an added spur to Westchester”™s housing market in coming months, freeing up money for sellers to buy suburban homes.
Realtors affiliated with the listing service reported a total of 1,944 sales that closed from July through September, an 8.2 percent increase from the third quarter of 2010. Sales of single-family houses in the county rose 9 percent from last year, with 1,326 houses changing owners in the third quarter.
The cooperative market saw the largest increase in quarterly sales from last year with 302 co-ops sold, an increase of 18.4 percent. Sales of two-family and four-family houses dropped to 85 deals in the quarter, an 11.5 percent decline from a year ago.
Third-quarter sales rebounded from this year”™s relatively weak first and second quarters, when 4,774 sales closed in Westchester, down 8 percent from the same period in 2010. P. Gilbert Mercurio, outgoing president and CEO of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors Inc., in his third-quarter analysis for the listing service said 2011 sales are on pace to nearly match sales volume in 2010 “and establish a mildly improving trend line from the depths of the recession in 2009.”
The third-quarter median sale price of a single-family house in Westchester was $684,005. That was down 6.3 percent from the third quarter last year, when million-dollar-plus properties accounted for 28 percent of house sales. Those high-end sales made up 26 percent of single-family house closings in the last three months.
The county”™s median sales price took a larger hit in the last quarter from sales of properties under $1 million, Mercurio noted. The average price of single-family houses under $1 million decreased 8 percent from a year ago, dropping from $590,000 to $540,000 this year.
The third-quarter median sale price of a condominium in Westchester was $337,500, down 2.5 percent from a year ago. The median price for co-op units was $166,011, a 7 percent decrease from 2010.
Mercurio in the report said New York City brokerages have reported housing sales volume increases of 12 percent to 16 percent in the boroughs from last year.
Continued economic uncertainty though, “suppresses enthusiasm for purchasing a property,” he noted.
Yet if the nation can avoid a second recession, third-quarter housing sales here “point more to an emerging recovery than to backsliding into a moribund market.”
