Long Island home sales, listings still lag

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Despite optimism that 2024 will be a better year for the Long Island housing market, the numbers so far don’t reflect much improvement. 

There were 2,184 homes in Nassau and Suffolk counties contracted for sale last month, down 8.6 percent from the 2,390 Long Island homes contracted for sale in March 2023, according to preliminary numbers from OneKey MLS. 

While the number of home sales last year was the lowest since 2014, pending home sales for the first quarter of this year lags behind the same period in 2023. There have been 5,496 Long Island homes contracted for sale in the first three months of this year, 2.8 percent fewer than the 5,652 homes contracted for sale in the first three months of last year. 

When compared with pending home sales from the first quarter of 2019, the last ‘normal’ pre-COVID year, the slower activity is even more evident. The 5,496 pending Long Island home sales in the first quarter of this year is about 22 percent fewer than the 7,040 pending sales recorded in Q1 2019. 

Home sales have been hampered by the lack of available homes for sale. There were 4,562 Long Island homes listed for sale with OneKey MLS as of Monday. That’s 5 percent less than the 4,803 homes that were listed for sale at the end of March 2023. The current inventory in Nassau and Suffolk is about 60.3 percent lower than the 11,472 homes that were listed for sale at the end of March 2019. 

The dearth of supply has contributed to higher home prices over the last few years. The median price of closed home sales in Nassau last month was $700,000, which is 8.5 percent higher than the $645,000 median recorded a year ago. In Suffolk, the median price of closed home sales last month was $585,000, a 12.8 percent increase from the $518,500 median recorded in March 2023. 

By comparison, the March 2019 median price of closed Nassau home sales was $515,000 and the Suffolk median was $372,688. In the last five years, home prices have climbed 36 percent in Nassau and about 57 percent in Suffolk. 

And while many brokers and industry observers have predicted that mortgage rates would retreat somewhat later this year, rates have not yet settled back. The current average mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed loan in New York is up to 6.9 percent according to bankrate.com. That’s a bump from the 6.54 percent rate of a year ago and much higher than the 4.27 percent average rate in March 2019.