There was more bad news for home sellers and good news for buyers in Nassau and Suffolkcounties in new figures released Monday showing house prices lower and unsold inventories higher last month compared with November of last year.
But at least one local broker sees the market as less bleak than those numbers would suggest. The report by the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island said that November home buying activity onLong Island, which in this report includes Queens as well as Nassau and Suffolk, held about even with last year's pace, with 2,170 contracted home sales in the month - a fraction of a percent less than a year earlier.
Including Queens, the "Long Island" median closing home price was $367,000 in November, the listing service said - a 1.9 percent increase from $360,000 a year earlier.
The results were less encouraging for Nassau and Suffolk, however, when the three counties were viewed individually. While the Queens median price rose 12 percent from a year earlier, to $392,000 last month, Nassau County's median of $399,500 represented a 1.4 percent decrease from a year earlier, and Suffolk's November median closing price of $320,000 represented a 3 percent decline.
But Jerry O'Neill, head of Coldwell Banker Harbor Light, which covers parts of the South Shore fromMassapequa to Babylon, says the lower closing prices reflect heavy activity in the lower price ranges. "If anything," he said, "we're seeing a firming up of prices at each level."
Further, he says, indications that mortgage interest rates might be inching upward again - combined with indications that prices are at or near bottom - are bringing out buyers.
The listing service also said the inventory of available residential properties on the multiple listing system increased by 2.7 percent from a year ago to 32,681 last month - although there was a slight decline from October.
