This real estate market seems to get stranger and stranger. With prices reaching an all-time high yet again, sales are down and inventory is up. Days on the market are also up. This appears to contradict supply and demand- if homes are selling more slowly and inventory is fairly high, why then is the average price going up?
November's average home sale price came in at $597,426. This makes it very likely that sold prices will reach (or top) an average of $600,000 by the end of 2018.
Inventory is a different story though. It has remained basically unchanged for seven months in a row now at roughly 2,000 homes on the market. And sales are also down about 5% since last year. Just 360 homes sold on Staten Island last month. So why the high prices?
You have to keep in mind that we only look at sold home prices. When Staten Island's market was listing 500, 600 or more homes over the past few months, we can see that many of those homes have not sold.
The key takeaway? Homeowners tend to look at these sale prices with no nuance and think their home can fetch these same prices. Homes selling for the higher prices are usually those close to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. If your home is in Travis or Rossville, you cannot price your home by the same rules.
Homes on the Northeast quadrant of the island will fetch the highest prices for their easy city access. This likely weighs the average sale price in their favor. The many homes that do not sell are simply overpriced and their value probably would not average $600k.
We also discuss the recent Advance article calling Staten Island a "buyer's market." This seems to jump the gun in our opinion because inventory is not really high enough, and nowhere near the pre-housing collapse levels of 5,000. And to call something a buyer's market, usually prices come down too, which they have not.
Join us for our full discussion in the video below!
Posted by Anthony Licciardello on
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