While the stormy conditions of last January might be a faint memory for many, realtors on Long Island know how tough a month it was.  Thanks to spring-like weather this year both sales and listings are up this January.  While we added 129 more houses to the inventory in Nassau County than we had last January - we sold (put under contract) 579 homes vs last year’s 529 homes.  Suffolk County's market shows the same incremental gain in sales but 215 less houses on the market than the same time last year. Hopefully the watchword for real estate on Long Island will be stability.  With enough buyers and not too many sellers to make the process of getting a fair market price easier. 

 

 

Century 21 has broken the mold and ventured into uncharted waters with its Superbowl commercial. What does the commercial say about the brand? The new management team is serious about restoring the brands pre-eminence on all levels of advertising. After spending the past three years revamping its Internet strategy - it is ready to re-enter television advertising to boost its internet strategy. The ad itself is a great way to boost its core message - our agents are smarter. bolder and faster. This takes the focus away from what we sell (homes) to how we sell them. Any Century 21 Agent should be happy with how far our Company has come in the past few years. It bodes well for us and our brand.

With the final numbers in for 2011 we can characterize the real estate market in Long Island as stabilizing.  Nassau County finished the year with an up month in December (over 2010 figures) and the 4th quarter ended with just 33 less houses under contract than last year's 4th quarter.  Year to date Nassau County ended 4% under last year's total under contracts.  Suffolk County did less well with a 7% drop year over year.

Prices were not stabilized yet with median home prices in Nassau declining 2.5% from $395,000 to $385,000. Suffolk County was down 6.5% with median prices declining from $325,000 to $305,000.

We need more activity and less price pressure from short sales and REO's to see any significant movement in prices and that is not in the cards for this year.  Sales activity in 2012 should improve over the last 2 years low levels - undoubtedly a higher percentage of sales this year will unfortunately be short sales.

If you waited for the past 2 years to sell you home -hoping for improvement - you lost 10 -15% waiting.  You probably won't lose more than a few percentage points waiting this year but if you have some place to go - not reason to wait to go there.  The prices there will probably be just as depressed as here.

If you waited during the past 2 years to buy - you saved 10-15% but paid rent and didn't get any tax advantages.  If you can get a mortgage and your job situation is stable or improving this might be the best year to buy.  Both interest rates and prices have brought the affordability index to a low you probably won't see in your lifetime.

Tune in next month for the first look at 2012 statistics.

When real estate sales in Nassau County went up 2.5% over last year in our third quarter, I thought there was a good chance that we would match or slightly exceed last year's production. Unfortunately both October and November have been a bit down from last year's numbers and the chance to show improvement in activity by the end of the year has faded.  It's not all bad news since some local markets are thriving.  Our own town of Plainview is up 9% over last year.  Levittown a very big market in Central Nassau County is up 6%.  Wantagh which has been up all year is still ahead 10%.  Massapequa another big market in Eastern Nassau County is only down 2% over last year's numbers.  There are glimmers of hope with the national economy especially the job statistics.  We live in hope of a slightly better performance over the next year.  Although the number of sales can improve, prices will stay lower into the spring.  A strong spring would bring not price increases but price stability, which would be a great thing for the market on Long Island.