Hi friends,
It's time to go over the Q3 stats for the Lower Hudson Valley real estate market. If you want to skip the county by county breakdown and jump right to the general summary, just scroll to the bottom, I won't be offended, maybe. If you want a super quick summary without doing anything here it is: it's good.
Here's what I'll be going over in this quick summary for the Lower Hudson Valley (data taken from OneKey Market Reports):
WESTCHESTER
As I'm sure you heard, Westchester is one of the best performing markets right now, due to the mass exodus from NYC due to COVID-19. We are also at a historically low level of inventory, which could also be due to people not wanting strangers in their home during a pandemic. The combination of this surge of interest and low inventory has caused median prices to increase by 22.5% when compared to this point last year. A slightly perplexing statistic is the increase in days on market, which isn't a huge increase but still, homes are on the market for slightly longer this year before contracts are executed. All in all, Westchester is definitely in a strong seller's market right now, if you're thinking of selling, now is a good time.
PUTNAM
Putnam County is also seeing an increase in price, however not as strong as some of it's surrounding counties, which is likely due to the fact that sellers are not listing their homes fast enough to meet the demand, stunting the growth that the county could potentially be seeing. A 30.2% drop in available inventory compared to last year is a huge decrease. Should more homes become available in the coming months, Putnam should see a considerable boost in median sale prices.
DUTCHESS
Dutchess County is not shy to the market boost that the southern counties are experiencing. The lower part of Dutchess County (Beacon, Hopewell, Pawling, etc) are often where every day NYC commuters tend to set their max at. Any further than that and the daily commute can become too long for them. However, due to COVID, it seems that working from home is shifting towards becoming the new norm. With that, NYC workers have expanded their searches further out to Dutchess County, with their jobs telling them they will still be working home after COVID subsides or only coming in a few days per week.
ORANGE
Orange County along with Rockland County are both seeing large drops in inventory, similar to Putnam County. However, both counties are outperforming Putnam with increases in median sales price. My theorizing to why this is is due to just the sheer difference in the size of each county, which can limit growth for smaller counties. With a 30% drop in inventory, Putnam saw only 433 total homes listed in Q3 while with a 35.6% drop in inventory, Orange saw 1,265 homes listed which is almost triple, allowing for more healthy growth.
ROCKLAND
As mentioned above, Rockland is benefitting from the increased demand in the Hudson Valley market, while remaining extremely low in inventory, at only 725 single family homes available listed during Q3, a 32.8% drop from Q3 2019. Both Rockland and Putnam are both probably struggling to surmount 10% median sale price growth due to the low amount of homes available in each county. Once Spring hits in 2020, both counties should see a big increase again.
SUMMARY
A general summary of how the Hudson Valley real estate market is doing is this: extremely freaking well. Due to the mass amounts of people leaving NYC to relocate up north, we have seen a huge increase in demand while supply has been kept low, which as economics shows, is driving prices straight up. There is no evidence showing that things will change in the near future, and with another wave of COVID-19 hitting the country, the winter months will probably be more active than typical as more people try to escape the city. One notable exception to this is the case of condos and co-ops which are underperforming in many aspects. I believe that most people leaving the city for more space and they want homes with some kind of privacy, and moving into a co-op or condo probably isn't going to be ideal for most of them. The condo that I listed this year, while sold because I'm a great agent (and humble) took longer than my other listings and sold for slightly under asking price. Anyway, if you're a homeowner in the Hudson Valley and thinking of selling, now is a very good time to consider that.
Wondering What Your Home is Worth?
After reading this, you might be thinking that the market is in great shape if you're a seller, and you would be completely right. Now is an amazing time to sell, due to the low inventory market that every county is experiencing. High demand and low supply creates competition and drives up prices. If you're curious about what you might be able to get for your home, hop on over to my website at RupertoRealEstate.com and fill out the valuation form to get a free, hand crafted report. The report wont be created by a computer, I do each request myself since I don't trust computers to accurately valuate your home, even though they will take over the world one day.
Thanks for listening friends,
Anthony Ruperto
Licensed Real Estate Salesperson
J Philip Real Estate, LLC.
914.494.0141
Anthony@JPhilip.net