Median home prices in Nassau, Suffolk rose in December as sales fell

The median sales price for a single-family home on Long Island continued to rise in December compared with that price a year ago, even as the number of sales slipped slightly, according to the latest data released Monday.

In Suffolk, the median sale price was $700,000, a 3.7% increase compared with December 2024, according to data from OneKey MLS, the multiple listing service that covers Long Island. That price was shy of the record-high $725,000 the county saw in November.

In Nassau, the median sales price increased 4.4% to $835,000 in December, compared with December 2024, according to OneKey. That remained below the record-high of $875,000 in August 2025, Newsday reported. 

Meanwhile, the number of home sales in both counties decreased slightly, data showed.

In Suffolk, 992 sales closed in December, a 3.8% drop from the same month in 2024. In Nassau, the number of closed sales declined 5.5% to 693 in December 2025 compared with December 2024.

Those higher prices and fewer sales demonstrate the trend that’s come to define Long Island’s housing market: There are not enough homes for the number of potential buyers, said Richard Haggerty, CEO of OneKey MLS.

“It is the same story,” Haggerty said. “What’s fueling the higher prices — and they are fairly significant increases — is the low inventory.”

Nationally, prices are cooling as the number of available homes for sale has ticked up, said Matt Christopherson, the director of business and consumer research for the National Association of Realtors. The median price of a home in the United States grew by about 0.4% in December 2025 compared with a year prior, according to NAR data. That growth was far less than in December 2024, when home prices rose by 5.8% compared with December 2023, Christopherson said.

But Long Island has bucked those national trends, Christopherson said.

“Markets like Long Island are different from the national picture,” Christopherson said. “Nationally, there has been more construction in the past year or so hitting the market. That’s what’s helped. But in markets like Long Island, that’s not happening” as much, he added.

Higher prices have benefited current homeowners, who build greater home equity and can get a greater price if they decide to sell, Christopherson said. But rising prices have made it difficult for buyers to afford a home on Long Island, particularly those up against multiple bidders, said Patrick Hall, an associate broker at Branch Real Estate Group.

“Because there's so many buyers and a lack of inventory, you're having bidding wars,” Hall said. “And some of the bidding wars are just pricing some of the buyers right out of the market.”

Some buyers have had enough with higher prices, said Angela Prince, a real estate broker at Weichert Realtors — Prince and Associates . Prince said while buyers are still putting in offers above a seller’s asking price in 2025, those offers were not as high as in 2024.

“Prices are just so high, the public is starting to speak,” Prince said. “We’re not going $100,000 over asking anymore.” 

To Prince, that’s a sign that Long Island’s pool of buyers may have reached the limit of what they’re willing to pay for a home. But Haggerty said that while there has to be a limit on prices, he wasn’t sure Long Island had reached it.

“There’s got to be a ceiling,” Haggerty said. “The challenge is, I’ve been saying that for the last three years.”

There are some signs that Long Island could see more sales in the new year, albeit amid higher prices, Haggerty said. The number of pending sales — deals that haven’t yet closed — rose in December in both counties, indicating that January could be a strong month for new deals, Haggerty said.

And if mortgage rates decline this year, more current homeowners could be encouraged to sell their homes and relocate or downsize, opening up more opportunities for would-be-buyers, he added.

After hitting a peak of nearly 8% at the end of 2023, mortgage rates have fallen, with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging at just over 6% as of Jan. 15, according to data from Freddie Mac.