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Hamptons sales down in first quarter
This past winter was rough on the Hamptons housing market, according to first quarter reports just filed by major Long Island real estate firms.
The Corcoran Group reported a 23 percent drop in units sold and a 19 percent drop in dollar volume, year over year, while Town & Country Real Estate noted that nine of the 12 markets they monitor saw a decline in the number of home sales for the first three months of 2011. In particular, East Hampton Village fared poorly, with 65 percent fewer trades: There were only 6 in 2011, compared to 17 for the same period in 2010.
Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate saw drops in average sales price and median sales price throughout the Hamptons and the North Fork. It also reports that the number of sales are down to 379 from 486 for the quarter, year over year.
At Brown Harris Stevens, economists report that the average residential sale price in the South Fork of $1,405,503 was down 21percent from the same period in 2010. Reasons for the decline include a particularly bad winter with record snowfalls, market corrections and last-minute closings at the end of 2010. Greg Heym, the chief economist at Terra Holdings, the parent company of Brown Harris Stevens, says, "Both prices and sales are lower [this quarter]. We found that there were 30 percent fewer closings year on year."
Heym says that the main reason for this was that there were a number of high-end sales that closed in 2010 that would have otherwise closed in 2011, but the parties involved were concerned over the possible end of Bush-era tax cuts, and so sped up the closings.
Additionally, lower-priced sales are taking up a bigger percentage of the market. "What we wound up seeing was a larger percentage of sales under a million," says Heym. "The low end is a bigger piece of the pie. But the second quarter will tell us a lot. If the next couple of months see a pick up, that will be telling. There's a rush at the end of the year, and then a hangover afterward."
Tags: The Corcoran Group , LI housing market , Hamptons , Town & Country Real Estate , Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate , Brown Harris Stevens , East Hampton , luxury market , Rich Cribs
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