June home sales fall short of 2010 record

Long Island home closings slumped in June by almost 44 percent compared with a year earlier, new data show.

The fall in sales, from 4,266 to 2,400, is skewed by last year's federal home buyers' tax credit, which originally required buyers to close deals by the end of June 2010, said the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island, whose report also covers Queens. June's number of closings last year was a record as buyers rushed to meet the deadline, said the trade group, whose data goes back to 1973.

Still, the drop took some real estate brokers by surprise, like Jim McIntosh, who expected a 10- to 15-percent decrease.

"The lack of incentives is keeping people on the fence," said McIntosh, broker owner of Complete Home Realty in Holbrook. "They're just not ready to pull the trigger, between the economy and no incentives."

First-time buyers and bargains helped pushed June's median closing price to $355,000, down from $368,000 a year earlier, the trade group reported. That's a 3.5 percent drop from a year ago, the biggest such dip so far this year, data show.

But month-to-month comparisons suggest that the market is stabilizing, said Joseph E. Mottola, chief executive of the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. June's median closing price was a 1.5 percent increase from the previous month's $350,000, figures show, and closings were a 24 percent jump from May's 1,932 deals.

Also, house hunters last month signed 2,753 contracts, an 8.6 percent increase from May, the report said. Contracts give clues to how the real estate market will do in coming months.

Mottola said that in the past several months, contract prices have been consistently higher than the appraisals instead of lower. "Stuff is starting to sell for more," he said.