Median home sale price drops 11.9% on LI in 2009

The median home sale price for all of last year fell 11.9 percent on Long Island, the sharpest knock since the housing bubble burst, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

The annual median price was $384,100, down from the preceding year's $435,800, which was just an 8.7 percent decrease from the $477,200 median in 2007, when the subprime lending sector imploded, the trade group reported.

Unemployment on top of tight credit drove down prices, real estate agents said, and this means it's still a buyer's scene.

"Some of the higher-cost areas are showing signs of stabilization, such as Nassau-Suffolk and Boston," Lawrence Yun, the group's chief economist, said.

Nationwide, the number of home deals shot up last year by double digits in all but three states, figures show.

In New York, sales last year jumped 21 percent, the report said. On the Island, sales last year increased by about 2.8 percent, the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island said.

Lee Lombardi, broker owner of LI Liberty Home Realty in Commack, attributed the fall in median price to sellers waking up last year to "reality about what buyers want to pay right now. . . . The people who wanted to sell had to reduce their prices."

Even though the national median sale price fell by 12 percent for the full year to $173,200, 67 out of 151 metro areas saw increases in prices as the year ended, the trade group said.

Long Island's fourth-quarter median price of $383,200 was a 0.3 percent uptick from a year ago, the report said. But that tiny change suggests stability in prices instead of the wild upswings that marked the boom years and the sharp drops seen after the subprime collapse.