Report: LI home prices jump, with limited inventory

Long Island home prices jumped in June, as scarce inventory gave sellers the upper hand.

In Suffolk County, the median closed sale price was $405,125 last month, an increase of 8 percent compared with the previous June, the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island reported Friday. Nassau County’s median sale price was $550,000, up 6 percent from a year earlier.

There is “huge demand” for affordably priced homes in Suffolk, said Pablo Geymayr, owner of Universal Homes Realty in Brentwood.

“I’ve been working with many buyers, and I have to make them understand if they really like the house, they have to make an offer over the asking price,” he said. “Everybody wants to buy because rent is too high right now.”

Down payments can be as low as $10,000, and monthly mortgage payments can be $3,000 for a home that might rent for $4,000, he said.

A slowing market could give buyers some relief from competition in the months to come. The number of closed transactions fell, year over year, by 11 percent in Suffolk and 14 percent in Nassau, the listing service reported.

With activity slowing, the number of homes listed for sale grew, year over year, by 1.3 percent in Suffolk and 13 percent in Nassau.

However, the market still favors sellers. At the current pace of sales, it would take less than five months to sell all listed homes in Suffolk and 5.6 months in Nassau. Brokers say a balanced market has a six- to eight-month supply of homes.

The number of pending sales increased by 4.7 percent in Suffolk and dropped by 0.6 percent in Nassau last month, compared with a year earlier, the listing service reported.

In Nassau, there’s plenty of sales activity in the $500,000 to $700,000 range, but it drops off in the higher price ranges, said Nick Sakalis, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Syosset.

“It’s a very balanced market," especially compared with a year or two ago, Sakalis said. “A lot of the sellers that were kind of fishing and looking for over-the-top, overpriced numbers for their homes are kind of coming down to earth and coming down to where they need to be."

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers health care and other business news on Long Island.