Happy New Year! This is an updated version of what appears in the January print newsletter in Tarrytown. For this kick-off article to 2018 I wanted to provide a summary of 2017 and compare to previous years. Here are some highlights / notables:
- Transactions were down some – ~8% lower than 2016
- List and sold prices were up double digits vs. 2016, with median sold prices up 17-18%
- Median home sizes were also up 17% from 2,499 sq ft to 2,932 sq ft
- Price / sq ft ended up a little over 1% for both list and sold values
- Days on market for 2017 were up 37% compared to 2016 to roughly 54 days, so even though the number of sales is not much lower, it is taking longer to sell
Looking at the trend for median sold $ / sq ft going back to 1996 (earliest year for which MLS data is available), prices have been on a steady rise since 2011 after 4 years of stagnant growth. Median sold $ / sq ft has increased over 50% from 2011 to 2017.
Also wanted to add a quick bonus graph showing transaction activity for the last 5 months of 2017 vs. the previous two years. I wrote in my December update that transaction activity was fairly similar to previous years for the August – November time period. But I updated that in my online post when the last half of November turned out to be slower than previous years. Now, looking at December, the trend continued and continued to me slower than previous years.
Too soon to tell if this is driven by the uncertainty about the impact of the tax bill, but now that it has passed and people are digesting what this means for them, we should start to see signs of what this will mean for real estate prices.
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