‘The Housing Boom Is Over’ In New York
The New York realtors have their march numbers out. “Sales of existing single-family homes in New York gained strength in March compared to the previous month. The March 2006 sales total fell 3.4 percent from the March 2005 sales total of 7,007.”
“While sales were up, the preliminary data showed a decline in the median sales price from February 2006. The median remained unchanged in March 2006 compared to the same period a year earlier.”
The group reports each month as preliminary, and the numbers are revised the next month. According to the printouts from January 2006, the statewide median of $319,000 was revised down to $300,000. Now the February 2006 statewide median of $300,000 has been revised down to $278,000.
The March 2005 statewide median is reported at $259,900. The preliminary number for March 2006 is $260,000.
Some county medians from the NYSAR files: Nassau is down 5.1% from the previous month. Putnam is off 8.5% from the previous month and 11.7% from a year ago. The Rockland median dropped 9.1% from the previous month. And Westchester declined 9.45 from February 2006 levels.
About Westchester. “A Westchester real estate agents’ group is declaring that the local housing boom has fizzled. The median selling price of a house in Westchester this winter was $650,000, up just 5.7% over a year, the Westchester-Putnam MLS announced yesterday.”
“It was the sixth consecutive quarter of single-digit increases, and the real estate group proclaimed that after eight years, ‘The boom is over.’”
“The number of houses sold was down 14% from a year ago, and the number of available houses was up by a third. The record median price for Westchester was set last summer at $711,700. In the fall, the median price was $652,250.”
“In Putnam County, the median price for a house was $375,000, down 8.5% from the year before, the group said.”
Thanks to the reader who provided the tip on this release. Note the links on the NYSAR site are PDF’s.
Remember this short story from High School?
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/rockwinr.html
I couldn’t help but think of it again as I talked to a friend about his housing “investment”.
If any of you take the time to read it again. I would like to hear what you have to say about it.
Im printing that out for my english class, I love stories like that.
Also this
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Neck.shtml
“Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . “
..and I run out of printer cartridges so often because. lol
I read both stories. You should be happy for what you have and can afford. Never feel inadequate.
Whew!
This is one of those stories that I had to read in two different classes, so I remember it well. Also in that category–”To Build a Fire,” a couple Hemingways, “Araby,” and “The A&P.” All great stories, but I was irritated that the English teachers couldn’t get it together enough to find out what we had read in earlier years.
The median in Westchester for the entire first quarter might be $650K, but check out the median for March- $600K. Uh oh.
lereah doesn’t realize that people are only treating RE differently because the prices of homes have gone up a lot. flat or declining prices means less investors and so the cycle begins.
For some priceless revelations from Lereah, check out Mish’s current post: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
Here’s a sample: “We made a mistake. It’s going to hurt. You are going to have a double digit drop. Expect it.”
Mish is one of the brightiest guys that I follow…You would all do well to read his musings…
Hear ye, hear ye, my local San Cruz RE radio gurururu just cleared things up for us. Housing prices are not, I repeat not, dropping. Yes the median house price is going down but that is only because people are settling for a lower priced home, thus moving things in a downward direction. I wish that I could go on his web site, push a button and have it smack him across his chops several times.
Also, housing prices weren’t rising previously. People were just settling for higher-priced homes because they could not find lower-priced homes.
It’s nice to know Baghdad Bob is gainfully employed these days…
Bwwwaahhaaa that’s funny. I forgot about him
Housing prices are not, I repeat not, dropping. Yes the median house price is going down but that is only because people are settling for a lower priced home, thus moving things in a downward direction.
Reminds me of a single-frame comic I saw in a magazine once. A dentist was standing next to his chair, looking up at what was a person-shaped hole in the ceiling, and he was yelling, “That wasn’t pain you felt! That was pressure, which you mistook for pain!
Oh yes, another of his pearls of wisdom…HOUSING PRICES DON’T GO DOWN UP HERE, THEY JUST GO SIDEWAYS AND UP, SIDEWAYS AND UP…I be watching to see when they pull his tv segment, hee,hee….
who is this?
Robert Aldana.He has the web site (www.letstalkrealestate.com/) and is a one man crusader to keep the bubble going.
NAH, He has company just saw a new guru on T.V. today. J.B. Banks I think his name was. By line- How to buy Probates for a profit.
I’m having trouble opening the pdf file….darn 7 year old computer’s never been the same since “Evil Al” reinstalled new harddrive w/o first asking if I wanted to spend the $$$…but that’s for another blog.
I was wondering if some kind soul might have the time to post info on Madison and Onandaga counties in NY. Thanks so much.
not good news but hardly a housing crash
http://www.dcbubble.blogspot.com
http://www.ameinfo.com/84329.html
It’s just amazing…..The predictions made by the calm and cool heads on this blog over the past 15 months are coming true. The interest rates, the falling dollar, the increased inventory, the speculator bail out, the stickiness of prices after demand dried up and inventory soared, and on and on.
Yes it’s amazing isn’t it. Now if I could only get my wife to understand why I don’t want to buy a house right now…
Market Conditions Orange County is the one of the highest rental markets in the United States. Market is softening. Affordability issues associated with rapid rise in rents.
Note: You need to make over $52,000.00 plus per year to afford a Class A two bedroom apartment in Orange County per National Low Income Housing Coalition.. In United States you need to make $15.37 per hour to rent a decent one or two bedroom apartment and pay utilities. Another measure: Need to make $21.24 per hour to rent a decent two bedroom apartment in Orange County and pay utilities.
There are about 400,000 rental units in Orange County about 40 percent of the housing stock.
Did you guys know this?
I don’t want affordable housing and broke people moving into my town. If they don’t make 150k per year, get out.
Got that right!!
Westchester is showing a 15% drop in median prices from last summer’s peak. it would be nice if the NY Realtors would make more historical stats available so we could see what the normal dropoff in median price during the 1st quarter looks like. seems safe to say, however, that real pricing pressure is starting to take hold
It’s interesting that with the median sales price at around $600,000, there are very few houses listed in Westchester at $600,000 or under. So I’m curious about what exactly is selling and how much below asking price. Our realtor claims that the only things moving really quickly are condos. I wonder if that’s true.
I am sure there are some panicky flippers giving deep discounts in the Trump buildings in White Plains these days. Still, you’d have to be crazy to buy a condo right now.
I agree that there are very few single family homes in Westchester with asking prices at $600,000. Seems that a lot of people must be selling below asking price
I bet you’re right skep-tic. I’ve always wondered why you’d want to pay those prices to live in White Plains.
Westchester is just crazy. I would love to move up there, but the housing you get for 650K is equivalently ugly to the places that people have been complaining about in CA. It’s a bubble at its best, but the NY snobbery continues to imagine Westchester to be some suburban status mecca. And it is, in some areas. Some parts are beautiful. But others - ugh. And the taxes are insane.
“I’ve always wondered why you’d want to pay those prices to live in White Plains.”
You get the high prices, and then you get the Westchester property taxes?
Where’s the win?
Have you looked at the apartments in the Trump buildings? I’ve been curious as to what they look like/how cheap the materials are, but haven’t gotten around to going to an open house yet. I plan to do that at some point just for a laugh.
My wife has a friend who lives in a Trump building on the far West Side. It’s actually a pretty nice building, I’ve seen it inside and out, but it doesn’t merit absurd prices folks seem to want to pay (it’s on the West Side Highway). Anyway, that’s just one of his buildings.
The westchester county board of realtors actually has data going back to 1982. Here is the site.
http://www.wcbr.net/
Just click on the sales stats button on the side and it will have a summary of the data by quarter or year. My real estate agent told me today the average time for a house to be on the market this time last year in westchester was 3 months, now it is 11 months.
March’s median sales price for Westchester is well below that of 2004’s median ($600,000 vs. $640,000)
http://www.nysar.com/pdfs/annualmedian.pdf
have we already lost all of 2005’s gains and then some?
great link, thanks. here are some random stats
sales of SFHs down 14% YoY
Inventory of SFHs at highest level since 1998 (up 38% YoY)
Inventory of condos up 81% YoY
Median single family home price in March down 15% since last summer’s peak ($711,700 vs. $600,000)
No soft landing here
It’s too easy to lie with these housing statistics. All that matters is what a given property in a given location could sell for at a given point in time. Of course you’ll never have the exact same property and location to compare. Still, if someone made an index of say a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1800 ft^2 home and tracked what it would sell for in a given market as a function of time this would be informative. It would be better than the statistical boondoggles that NAR pulls.
From what I can gather, some of the ‘burbs around NYC are softening up a bit, but Manhattan remains pretty solid. One good example: a friend owns a 2 BR in the West Village in a good building where nothing has been for sale in over a year. A broker is asking 2 BR owners in the building to “name their price” for a buyer he represents. He’s considering asking $2mm ($1,250/ sq ft) and the broker thinks that price will work. $1,250/ sq ft is above where comps in W. Village sold last year…
manhattan is is different since a lot of the smart money hedgefund players that are betting housing will crash and buying up credit default swaps live in manhattan along with half of wall street. these guys get million $$$ bonuses and they use it to buy the million $$$ apartments. once the bonuses dry up that is when the manhattan RE will crash.
Obviously, Wall Street drive the NYC economy. But there are other factors: empty nesters moving in, foreigners (lots of them) seeking pied-a-terres and celebrities waiving in a showplace pads…
the buildings where the apartments sell for $2 million also have pretty high standards or they don’t let you buy. At least 20% down payment, usually more and enough cash in the bank that you can pay your housing for 6-18 months if you lose your job.
i know. i live in one of them.
2006 will end up = 2004
and 07 prices amy = 2003
Economy grew at 4.8% annual rate in Q1 (WOW!)…that’ll make it hard for the Fed to pause….
Goodbye Hamptons bubble prices:
http://www.suffolkresearch.com/report.pdf