Housing sales in Westchester and Putnam counties continued trending downward in the third quarter with reduced sales volume, “moderately impacted prices” and rising inventory of unsold units.
Realtors participating in the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service Inc. reported 2,102 closings in Westchester during the third quarter, 23 percent fewer than last year”™s level. The 277 closings in Putnam County were 16 percent fewer than last year”™s third quarter.
The Realtors said the skid has been ongoing for 18 months.
“It”™s consistent with what”™s going on in the sense that our sales activity is down from last year and that prices are also decreased from last year, but not consistent in the amount of our difficulty is a lot less than it is in the rest of the country especially with regard to the pricing,” said P. Gilbert Mercurio, CEO of the Westchester County Board of Realtors. “The median price of a single family house in Westchester is less than 3 percent below what it was last year; the rest of the country is 9 percent below.”
Credit standards were becoming tighter, although qualified buyers had few problems obtaining mortgages, the Realtors reported.
The Realtors cited a 0.5 percent to 1 percent rise in Westchester unemployment as a downward contributing factor. Many high-end purchases have historically been fueled by Wall Street paychecks.
The Westchester-Putnam real estate market fared well considering the negative
forces, the Realtors assert. Sales volume has suffered all year long but so far prices and inventory have not been severely impacted, they said.
The third-quarter sales rate for all categories of housing was 3 percent below the second quarter pace. However, single-family home sales outperformed the other housing categories with a 2 percent gain over the second-quarter rate.
Westchester and Putnam counties have not experienced a significant accumulation of inventory, according to the report. At the end of the third quarter, total residential units for sale in Westchester numbered 7,294, 4 percent more than a year earlier. The 2008 level actually was lower than that of 2006.
For the near term at least, the Realtors said it appears that homeowners are electing to stay out of the market until conditions improve. They cite a relatively wealthy demographic as being able to wait out the market.
The third-quarter median sale price of a single-family house in Westchester was $710,000, a decrease of $20,000 or 3 percent from last year”™s record-setting third quarter median of $730,000. The average sale price was down by 5 percent, to $918,737. Properties selling for more than $1 million in the third quarter accounted for 25.3 percent of all Westchester single-family house sales, a fraction of a percent more than last year.
The County Clerk”™s Office reports monthly levels of more than 200 foreclosure
filings in recent months whereas that number was in the range of 80 to 90 per month in
2005 and even 2006, the report states. Actual foreclosure judgments have also increased, from 20 or 30 monthly in 2005 to more than 100 in recent months.
The hardest hit sector of the local real estate market has been two- to four-family
houses. The sales in the third quarter were barely one-third of the rates achieved at the top of the market in 2005 and 2006, and median sale prices have dropped by about 18 percent over the same period of time.
“It has more of an investor component to it than the other sectors, and investors have been withdrawing from the market,” Mercurio said of the two-to-four family houses.
The best-performing sector of the market from a price aspect was the
condominium sector, the report states. The third-quarter median sale price of $395,900 was barely changed from 2007 and was higher than in 2005 and 2006. The mean sale price of $449,235 was 3 percent above last year”™s level. Sales volume, though, lagged behind last year”™s by 26 percent.
“The median sale price is a little more indicative of what”™s happening in the market,” said Mark Boyland of Keller Williams NY Realty and president of Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing.
Boyland said higher-end units that sell can skew the average.
“Keep in mind in this market people who are downsizing from single-family homes are probably going to be moving into condominiums that are more affordable,” Boyland said. “The bottom line is the number of sales are still down in that category a significant amount.”
If the local real estate market were to close out 2008 at the same rate as experienced in
the past three quarters, total sales volume would be around 7,000 units for the year for
the four housing categories tracked by the listing service. That count was
last posted in 1994.
