From Newsday:
LI home buyers feeling in control
It’s still a buyer’s market on Long Island but less so in Queens, according to the latest report on housing sales and prices.
Statistics compiled for the real estate brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman and released today show that housing prices and sales on Long Island slipped in the first quarter, compared with a year ago, while inventories rose. But in Queens, sale prices continued to appreciate.
The data exclude the Hamptons and the North Fork.
The latest findings largely confirm the results of other reports released recently.
Overall in the three counties, the median sale price of a home fell 0.6 percent to $437,500, compared with $440,000 a year ago. The number was buoyed by a 3.8 percent increase in the median home price in Queens to $492,900. But the statistic was pulled down by a 4.2 percent drop in median prices in Nassau, to $460,000, and a 1.8 percent drop in Suffolk, to $385,000.
Rosie West, an associate broker for the real estate firm Re/MAX Action in Freeport, said sales are slowing because sellers are still “overpricing” their homes, and buyers are holding out. “Buyers are in control right now, and they know it,” she said. “They have a lot of homes to choose from.”
In fact, the number of sales declined 6.4 percent in the three-county area, said Prudential, which is based in Huntington. But again, Queens buoyed that number with a 1.2 percent increase. Meanwhile sales declined 3.2 percent in Nassau and 14.7 percent in Suffolk.
As a result, overall listing inventories rose – 17.9 percent from a year earlier, to 31,954 homes. In Nassau they climbed 19 percent, to 9,260 houses. In Suffolk the listings rose 20.1 percent, to 13,424. In Queens the supply of homes listed for sale rose 13.7 percent, to 9,270.
I don’t know how anyone can this a buyers market. Prices doubles, then ease off by a few percent, and this is supposed to be a buyers market?
It can’t be a buyers market when prices are still grossly out of line with the underlying fundamentals. So then, what makes this a “buyers market”? Sellers actually have to clean up a little before an open house? Final prices are now negotiated rather than seller dictating a starting price meant to be bid up by packs of hungry buyers? It now takes time and effort to sell? Calling it a buyers market just shows how jaded everyone has gotten over the last few years.
For a seller who accepts these changes and has owned the place for at least a few years, this is a sellers market, where one can still make a handsome profit. It’s just take a little more effort, patience, humility and an understanding that your not going to get what your neighbor got last year.