Westchester Putnam Multiple Listing Service Year End 2009 Market Report
2009 was dismal, but we have turned the corner.
That is the crux of the market report issued this week by the Westchester Putnam MLS. I generally let this document speak for itself because I frankly am not in love with it. Not because anything in it is wrong - not at all. it just is as the old chestnut goes: all real estate is local . Well that is never more true in residential res estate. What transpires in Bronxville is not the same as Yorktown! To aggregate them together and draw a conclusion is simplistic at best.
This is precisely why a local Realtor is so valuable. I may sound like an advertisement but an agent who knows his or her local market in depth has valuable knowledge to impart to a buyer or seller that no dry statistics, and certainly no broad brush county-wide chart can impart. So find a good agent and listen.
Ok, I will shut up with the glories of Realtors. of course I am wonderfu, and there are many other excellent brethren as well. But what did the dry as dust report that I alluded to say? Well before I give you the link to it, a couple of tidbits. here goes:
2009 sucked
Yes, that is a real estate term for it was rotten, lousy, stinky, slow, frustrating, infuriating, exasperating, well, you get the picture.
BUT, it also set the beginnings of the recovery. If you have spoken to me this year you know I have probably spoken to you about the concept of value cycles and the slow inexorable movement of real estate markets. I learned this concept while working at Pricewaterhousecoopers LLP and meeting the legendary Peter Korpacz MAI, one of the great market researchers and analysts in the commercial real estate industry, who was able to develop a mathematical model to project value cycles of markets all over the United states and plot their position on a curve showing an upswing, stasis or a downturn. It was remarkably accurate and is still used in the Korpacz Investment Survey. The point being that the market, while currently weak, WILL recover. When, I cannot give you an exact answer but it will not be 2010. 2011, doubt it, but it will be more stable than this year. beyond that it is hard to tell. Cycles are slow, but crashes are fairly quick, and that part is basicallyly over. The bumpy portion of the cycle is here now, with psychological ups and down now until unemployment improves and consumer confidence gets stronger.
I will not bore you with an endless rehash of what you can read at the Link below. Everything is down. What is interesting is that coops showed the smallest decline last year, with a median sales price decline of 5.4%, which is half the decline of single family homes. Coops are fantastic defensive purchases in a recession, and I am quite frankly surprised that they do not sell better.
So read the Boards report, and comment away. I want to know what you think. I have prepared statistical analysis of several submarkets in southern Westchester that show different results than the blended rates from the county-wide results, which only confirm that all sales are local!
Click the link below for the end of year Westchester Putnam Board of Realtors 2009 Report:
