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Median closing prices LI homes rise

BY ELLEN YAN | ellen.yan@newsday.com

9:32 PM EDT, May 7, 2008

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Median closing prices on homes on Long Island and in Queens have gone up for the first time in months, just as the house-buying season goes into full swing.

According to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island, which also covers Queens, it went up in April to $415,000 from $409,000 in March. Some agents had predicted the median closing figure would fall to a four-year low of $400,000.

"The attractiveness of current mortgage interest rates has kept buyers in the market," said Valerie Van Cleef, president of the Women's Council of Realtors' Long Island chapter and an agent with Coach Realtors in East Norwich. "I think that buyers realize that things are not as bad as the media portrays them to be.

"Buyers, when they read it, don't realize . . . that markets are really local and that a lot of the stuff that's going on is going on in other parts of the nation . . . hit them harder than us here on Long Island."

Nationally and locally, creative financing and risky loans made to borrowers who clearly could not pay have helped lead to the mortgage crisis, tightening credit and higher rates of foreclosures.

Long Island's April uptick is still lower than prices a year ago, when the median closing figure was $440,000, and far from the boom years of 2003-05, during which Van Cleef remembers sales prices rocketing by double-digit percentages each month in certain neighborhoods.

Also, residential inventory continues to rise, from 34,129 a year ago to 36,790 last month, according to MLS.

Mohsen Zandieh, president of the Long Island Board of Realtors, said middle-of-the-road homes are selling, contributing to the jump in median closing prices.

"I think average people are out in the market now as opposed to the first-time buyer and luxury buyers," said Zandieh, who is also head of Arash Real Estate and Management Company in Little Neck.

Van Cleef expects median closing prices will continue going up and down this year as sellers correct their prices.

"Many of them have become more realistic and understand because they have been educated by the brokers and the media and responded," she said. "I think we've kind of turned the corner . . ."

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