Yahoo Finance The Hamptons Housing Market Is Off to a Strong Start Ahead of Summer
We’re still a week away, but it looks like spring has already sprung in the Hamptons.
The home buying and selling season has kicked off in the wealthy Long Island enclave, and according to some real estate agents, it’s going to pick up even more in the months to come. As of February, 116 single-family homes entered the market, a whopping 51 percent uptick compared to last year, Bloomberg reported. At the same time, the number of buyer contracts was up 44 percent.
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“Everyone was waiting for something,” Todd Bourgard, chief executive officer for Long Island at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, told Bloomberg. “The buyers were waiting to see if prices would come down, and prices not only held steady, they crept up. And homeowners are realizing that we are in a very, very good market for sellers.”
Still, with inventory still below pre-pandemic levels, the Hamptons market continues to be competitive. For example, at the end of 2019, there were a total of 1,831 single-family properties available. At the end of 2023, there were only 996 homes on the market. “Inventory is still very scarce,” Tal Alexander, co-founder of brokerage Official, told Bloomberg. “There’s definitely more buyers out there than there are real sellers.”
Of course, historically low inventory levels mean prices for residences remain higher than usual. February posted a 136 percent gain in new Hamptons listings asking between $5 million and $9.99 million, such as a Southampton estate with a pool and tennis court that is on the market for just shy of $7 million. On the even higher end of the spectrum, three homes listed at $20 million or more hit the market in February, which is one more than last year during the same time period.
“Buyers that were sitting on the sidelines are starting to get nervous that if interest rates do start to come down, there’ll be more competition in the market and prices may even go up further,” added Pam Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group. To get ahead of the crowd, Libeman said more property shoppers are making all-cash offers, a trend from last year, when, in the third quarter, 42.5 percent of luxury homes were purchased in cash.
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