Get Ready for Another Sizzling Summer Real Estate Market in Westchester

                                                 By Sue Treiman

Lo­cal re­al­tors ex­pect Westch­ester to re­main a red-hot real es­tate mar­ket dur­ing the warmest months of 2024, but the siz­zling tem­per­a­ture may be slightly dis­si­pat­ing.

An April uptick in the num­ber of new homes of­fered for sale sug­gests a bet­ter bal­ance be­tween the tight sup­ply of listed prop­er­ties and a sky-hot buyer de­mand may be com­ing. Still, prices are likely to re­main high and buyer com­pe­ti­tion fierce.

The Hud­son Gate­way As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al­tors (HGAR) re­vealed that the me­dian home in Westch­ester County fetched roughly $870,000 dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2024, a hike of more than 16 per from the pre­vi­ous year’s $750,000 me­dian price. April, though, saw the num­ber of prop­er­ties for sale climb by 11 per­cent, sug­gest­ing that some loos­en­ing in the tight sell­ers’ mar­ket.

“Spring and sum­mer are tra­di­tion­ally the busiest time of year for home sales as peo­ple try to move in be­fore school starts, so I be­lieve we’ll see more houses com­ing on the mar­ket and prices con­tin­u­ing to rise,” says Vlora Se­jdi, the in­com­ing pres­i­dent of the Whites Plains-based HGAR. Se­jdi as­sumes lead­er­ship of the 14,000-mem­ber or­ga­ni­za­tion in 2025.

Soar­ing prop­erty val­ues rank Westch­ester among the 10 most ex­pen­sive places to live in Amer­ica. Con­do­minium prices and apart­ment rentals are also climb­ing, while co­op­er­a­tive apart­ments are post­ing more mod­er­ate hikes.

“There’s strong de­mand for the Westch­ester and for the River­towns across the board, and it’s cre­at­ing a mar­ket that ri­vals the one we saw dur­ing Covid, when every­one was so ea­ger to leave the city,” says Cold­well Banker’s Bill Ford-Suss­man, a 35-year river­towns real es­tate pro­fes­sional and Dobbs Ferry na­tive.

The siz­zling sell­ers’ mar­ket is com­pli­cated, in part, by a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of older home­own­ers who re­main in their houses af­ter their chil­dren leave.

“A num­ber of peo­ple are trapped by ‘golden hand­cuffs,“ says Se­jdi, “and many of them want to down­size but, be­cause of a com­bi­na­tion of high in­ter­est rates and in­creas­ing prices, they find it tough to re­place their ex­ist­ing home with a less ex­pen­sive place.”

HGAR noted a 20 per­cent de­cline in avail­able homes dur­ing the first few months of 2024 and a nine per­cent dip in over­all home sales. Spring and sum­mer nor­mally al­ter the sell-to-buy ra­tio, but even with more prop­er­ties to choose from, a cur­rent 30-year fixed mort­gage rate that ex­ceeds seven per­cent is dri­ving over­all costs higher—well be­yond the Jan­u­ary 2021 low of 2.65 per­cent.

“Ac­cord­ing to every mort­gage bro­ker I’ve spo­ken to, the low rates of around three per cent are prob­a­bly gone for­ever,” adds Se­jdi.

So many peo­ple are seek­ing a lo­cal ad­dress, in fact, that some buy­ers are will­ing to do what­ever it takes to stake a lo­cal claim. “Lately, we’ve had 15 to 20 peo­ple a com­ing to our show­ings in the first week­end,” says Ford-Suss­man, “and of­fers now come ex­tremely quickly, with some homes go­ing from ini­tial list­ing to con­tract in about two weeks.”

The ma­jor­ity of as­pir­ing home­own­ers ar­rive armed with a pre-ap­proved mort­gage. Many are also will­ing to of­fer large amounts of cash, make an on-the-spot bid, and go well be­yond the ask­ing price. In March, the on­line mar­ket­place Zil­low found that 44 per­cent of ac­cepted of­fers were higher than the listed fig­ure.

While much of the New York City met­ro­pol­i­tan area is a su­per-charged real es­tate mar­ket, Westch­ester in gen­eral and the river­towns in par­tic­u­lar are ex­cep­tion­ally pop­u­lar. Buy­ers lured by the area’s ‘hip’ rep­u­ta­tion, an easy com­mute to the city, prox­im­ity to the Hud­son and a small-town feel and walk­a­bil­ity, and cit­ing con­cerns about es­ca­lat­ing ur­ban crime (which may not be borne out by sta­tis­tics) are more mo­ti­vated than ever.

Anec­do­tally, lo­cal re­al­tors re­port that some as­pir­ing home­own­ers write plead­ing let­ters to sell­ers, oth­ers knock on doors hop­ing to ini­ti­ate a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion. Still oth­ers drive the streets look­ing for early signs that a prop­erty is be­ing pre­pared for sale. The es­ca­lat­ing com­pe­ti­tion can spur tough “bid­ding wars,” a term many re­al­tors de­test. “With mul­ti­ple of­fers com­ing in for any prop­erty there can be only one win­ner, and that cre­ates lots of dis­ap­point­ment,” says Se­jdi.

The tight mar­ket has also sent Westch­ester Coun­ty’s “af­ford­abil­ity in­dex” –what it takes fi­nan­cially to sur­vive in an area – plum­met­ing by ap­prox­i­mately 15 per­cent in the last year, po­ten­tially threat­en­ing di­ver­sity.

De­spite that, Se­jdi re­as­sures mo­ti­vated home-seek­ers that pa­tience and per­sis­tence usu­ally do pay off. “It’s al­most like you have to be 100 per­cent de­voted to your home search or have an agent 100 per­cent de­voted to it, but if you bal­ance that com­mit­ment with re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tions there are homes and there is hope,” she says.