Photo courtesy of Gotham Foto, courtesy of Dean & Bender
In the first quarter of 2022, Westchester County remained one of the most desirable places to live not just in New York State, but across the country.
Demand goes up and supply goes down. It’s that simple, property prices in Westchester reflect that.
It’s the same story taking place across the country. More people are trying to buy fewer homes, and home prices have skyrocketed as the real estate market stabilizes into the new normal.
In 2019, the median sale price for a home in Westchester County was $630,000. In 2021, this number increased to 750,000 dollars, and in 2022 the upward trend will undoubtedly continue.
Westchester County residents remained stagnant during that time period, but prices and demand continued to rise, meaning that existing residents outside the county are priced as buyers from elsewhere bid higher than asked, driving up property values across the county. In 2021, some Westchester cities and towns saw more than 50 percent of new buyers come from New York City.
According to a report by Houlihan Lawrence, although home inventory in Westchester County was down nearly 30 percent year-over-year, the number of luxury sales (defined as sales of more than $2 million) in the first quarter of 2022 increased by 20 percent. percent approximately. This time last year.
40 percent of all luxury listings in the county closed when asked above, and the average time a listing remained on the market decreased by nearly 20 percent.
The luxury market is something of its own. In one case, a sale was made $1 million above asking price, but as demand grows at the top of the market, pressure is building across the board, and wealthy buyers are unloading properties that would once have been considered affordable.
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The most expensive home sale in Westchester County so far in 2022 was a property in Harrison, at over $8 million.
It is a seller’s market. A homeowner who is not satisfied with the offers they receive can simply sit back and watch their property value increase in real time, and until there is a serious push to build more housing in Westchester County, these conditions will continue.
Of the approximately 400,000 housing units in the county, less than six percent have been built in the past twenty years; The average home in Westchester was built in 1956. More than a quarter of the county’s homes were built prior to 1939.
With each passing year, the maintenance of older property becomes more expensive, and the money spent on it is expected to be returned on sale.
In the healthy housing market, new construction will provide an ample supply of homes to relieve stress and replace aging housing stock, but in Westchester these homes are not built, and the burden often falls on an ambitious Westchester homeowner. Above all, if first quarter results are any indication, the Westchester real estate market remains the place for sellers and the competitive jungle for buyers.