Don’t call it a shortage — but the number of homes on the market has shrunk to a 13-year low.
The decline, coupled with a double-digit increase in buyers in some parts of the country, and you have Realtors itching for the spring selling season to begin.
“With fewer homes available, and more buyers’ demand, it’s easy to see that home prices have only one way to go — up,” said Tricia Chirco, market analyst at the Long Island Board of Realtors, covering Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties.
“We had one home on the market in East Meadow last week at $399,000 and it got six offers during the weekend, some over the list price, ” she said. “That’s demand.”
“Homeowners are going to be putting homes on the market in March and April, which is what they’ve wanted to do for a long while,” she said. “Flowers are out and it’s easier to show a home.”
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, which yesterday said the US inventory of homes hit a 13-year low, declared:“We’ve transitioned into a seller’s market.”
Indeed, the number of homes for sale in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk shrunk by 21 percent in the past year, while traffic of home-hunters has soared by as much as 40 percent, even in the frigid winter months, said Chirco.
Statewide, inventories of homes for sale tumbled 19 percent to 74,731 in the past year while demand is up by the double digits,
“This is going to push up median home prices,” said Sal Prividera, a spokesman for the New York State Association of Realtors.
“Homeowners who were sitting on the sidelines waiting for prices to rise will now have a change to make their moves,” said Prividera.
The NAR said the median price for homes in the New York-Northern New Jersey area is up 3.6 percent to $392,000 from a year earlier. In the Northeast, home sale deals were up 12.1 percent in January from a year ago, to an annual pace of 650,000 deals, said the NAR.
The nation's inventory of existing homes for sale dropped 25.3 percent past year to 1.74 million homes, for a 4.2-month supply of homes at the current sales pace.
Realtors waiting for spring
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Realtors waiting for spring
