Number of Long Island home sales plunge in May as prices rise 10%

Long Island home sales plummeted in May, but a scarce supply of listings pushed up prices.

The number of closed home sales dropped last month by nearly 46% in Nassau County and 34.4% in Suffolk County, compared with the previous May, OneKey MLS reported Wednesday. New contract signings fell even more precipitously, declining year-over-year by more than 60% in Nassau and nearly 46% in Suffolk, the multiple listing service reported.

Despite the steep drop in activity, the median price increased by slightly more than 10% annually in both counties, to $585,000 in Nassau and $429,450 in Suffolk, the report shows.

The inventory of homes listed for sale dropped annually by 23.6% in Nassau and 25.5% in Suffolk.

It would take 8.5 months to sell all the homes listed for sale in Nassau, and 5.7 months in Suffolk, at last month’s pace of sales. Brokers say a balanced market has a six- to eight-month supply of homes.

Once the state gave approval for Long Island real estate agents to resume in-person work on June 10, sellers and buyers alike started to venture back into the housing market, said Natacha Nawang, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Greater Nassau in Garden City. Previously, agents were only allowed to work virtually or in their offices, in a measure intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Low mortgage rates – averaging 3.21% for a 30-year loan, according to the latest report from mortgage giant Freddie Mac – are helping to make homes more affordable, she said.

Many buyers are looking for houses with at least three bedrooms and a backyard, “something they can enjoy if they’re stuck here, because you never know what can happen again,” she said.

Nawang said she has seen a recent daily uptick in the number of listings.

Homeowners who have considered selling, she said, “have seen a lot of buyers looking, they’ve seen a lot of activity in the market, so they feel like maybe it’s time.”

Long Island homes have become increasingly attractive to buyers from New York City, and the increased competition is driving up prices, agents and sellers said.

Sebastian Cieslak, a real estate investor who specializes in buying condominiums in a 55-and-over community in Ridge, renovating them and reselling them, said he accepted an offer on a one-bedroom unit listed for $180,000 during the shutdown from a buyer who had not visited the condo in person before making the offer. Cieslak said he expects to close soon on his purchase of a two-bedroom unit he intends to renovate and list for $290,000, since that's what similar units are now selling for – up from the $260,000 or $265,000 buyers were paying before the pandemic.

“The people that live in the city, they want to get out of the city," he said. 

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.