Values are Holding as Homes Take Longer to Sell

by Warren Homes

Values are Holding as Homes Take Longer to Sell

By Brent Katzmann, NYS Lic Associate Broker, Warren Real Estate

We are now well into the traditional selling season for residential real estate and can begin to see some solidification of market trends that began to emerge in March and April. For the first time in a few years, single family listing activity has been increasing in most school districts and across a wide range of price values.

While these increases are not dramatic, they are meaningful as we see much of the increased activity occurring in the higher priced markets of Ithaca and Lansing where listings are up 7% and 9% respectively, (albeit on a small base in Lansing). Newfield, which experienced rather substantial value increases last year, is also seeing elevated listing activity, up nearly 24%, again on a small base.

Further, most of the increased activity has been in the $400-800,000 list price range while those below $400,000 have actually declined in prevalence. While these trends may be primarily a matter of the mix of homes coming to market, it also suggests that the overall increases in values our market area has seen in recent years simply means there are fewer homes seeing values under $400,000 than there have been historically.

This increase in inventory availability has given buyers, if nothing else, more opportunity to shop and more patience to find the right house and not just any house. As a result, homes are taking longer to go under contract.

With this less frenetic pace of bidding and selling, we are now seeing sales prices that are often at, or slightly below, the prices being listed by the sellers

In these market conditions it would be fair to assume that values must be falling. That would be an inaccurate assumption. The inherent things that create market value: limited inventory, economic stability, buyer demand and general attractiveness of the local market all remain in place. As you can see, across the school districts, values have continued to climb. However, in any given price range, the values remain stable. So what do these seemingly conflicting points tell us? As more homes in higher price ranges enter the market, as we’ve seen above, the overall average will also increase, but the homes themselves are seeing a flattening of the valuation growth that they experienced over the past few years.

Source: Ithaca Board of REALTORS MLS
All stats are for single-family residential, non-waterfront, Tompkins County