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Suffolk home sales prices down 6%

BY TOM INCANTALUPO | tom.incantalupo@newsday.com

6:28 PM EST, February 11, 2008

Housing prices on Long Island and in Queens slid further last month, to their lowest level in almost three years, a real estate cooperative reported Monday.

One thing did go up, though, in the latest report from the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island: the inventory of unsold homes, which rose by 23 percent to 33,453.

The service said the median closing price for a home in the three counties was $417,500, down 4.6 percent from a year earlier.

"The last time Long Island reported a median [closing] home price lower than $417,500 was in April of 2005 when it was $415,000," the service said.

After years of steady increases, prices began turning downward in 2006.

Prices in Nassau County declined the least -- by 2.2 percent from January of last year, to a median of $440,000. In Suffolk, the decline was 6 percent, to $373,500. Queens was hardest hit, with the median price falling by 9.8 percent in January from a year earlier, to $438,000.

The service's chief executive officer, Joseph Mottola, attributed the larger declines in Queens and Suffolk to relatively higher percentages of subprime mortgages there than in Nassau -- and to homeowners having difficulty paying them. "When people perceive that they may get into trouble," said Mottola, "there may be a greater sense of urgency to sell and that will be reflected in the pricing."

Home values are falling nationally. After 40 years of rising numbers, the national median home price fell for the first time last year, a 1.4 percent drop to $218,900, even as 2007 ranked as fifth-highest in sales, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

Sales of existing homes dropped 12.8 percent compared with 2006, the trade group said.

Some experts said they think prices will fall for another two years, before turning upward again.

Martin Cantor, director of Dowling College's Long Island Economic and Social Policy Institute, was quoted in Sunday's Newsday as suggesting that home prices on Long Island, which have fallen by 5 percent in Nassau County and 7 percent in Suffolk over the past year, could drop another 15 percent before prices stabilize. He predicted that the time a house spends on the market, currently under four months, will jump to seven months.