Luxury Home Prices Fall in Long Island Housing Market
Luxury home prices slid in New York’s Long Island and Queens in the first quarter as more property came onto the market and took longer to sell, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and home mortgage broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said.
The median sales price fell 5.3 percent to $900,000 from a year earlier and houses took 25 percent more time to lure a buyer, the companies said today in a report. An oversupply of expensive houses for sale is reducing demand, Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel, said in an interview.
“You’re just not seeing the [New York mortgage] demand level that you had been seeing in prior years,” Miller said. “You just reached a saturation point to what the economy could support.”
The decline in the luxury market in these areas outside Manhattan mirrors a drop in prices across the U.S. In Manhattan, the most expensive urban real estate market in the U.S., the median apartment price rose 1.2 percent in the first quarter to $835,000, the smallest quarterly gain in five years.
The luxury market is defined as houses priced from $750,000 to $12.5 million.
Longer Selling Time: In the first quarter, it took owners 121 days to sell their homes, compared with 97 days a year earlier, a sign demand has weakened.
The weakness at the high end also hurt the overall Long Island housing market, which includes the suburbs of Nassau and Suffolk counties, and in Queens, a borough of New York City.
The Long Island housing market is usually slower in the first quarter and results in the second quarter will be a better barometer of the market’s condition.
“The true test is to watch the second quarter,” Dottie Herman, president and chief executive officer of Prudential, said in an interview.
Sales fell 6.4 percent to 7,001 from a year ago and the median sales price slipped less than 1 percent to $437,500. The number of homes for sale jumped 18 percent to 31,954, as those seeking mortgage loans appear hesitant to follow through at the moment.
“Inventory levels today are double what they were two years ago,” Miller said. “It’s a real issue. What that’s going to do is temper any price appreciation going into the spring market.”
The overall Queens housing market performed better than Long Island because it’s close to Manhattan and considered more affordable than other parts of the city. More people apply for New York home loans there, as opposed to buying outright like they might in Manhattan.