From left: Muffin Dowdle, broker at Ginnel Real Estate; Cathleen Smith, president of Coldwell Banker Residential
Brokerage, Connecticut/Westchester; Houlihan Lawrence CEO Chris Meyers; Chris Raveis, managing partner of William Raveis
Real Estate, Mortgage & Insurance; and Mark Nadler, president/principal broker of Prudential Centennial
From the December issue: Westchester may be the suburb that’s home to some of the area’s biggest local celebrities — from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Martha Stewart — but that hasn’t prevented market forces from taking hold of the real estate market there.
Just north of the city, the county has been struggling for the last few years and, like the market in the city, hasn’t fully rebounded yet.
In this month’s Q&A, The Real Deal talked to brokers and market analysts about everything from Westchester’s super-luxury market to the rental market to the foreclosure situation.
Our sources said that after several years of stagnation, there was finally an uptick in sales volume in the third quarter. But that improvement didn’t translate into prices, which are still down by as much as 10 percent from a year ago and by 30 to 40 percent from the boom.
The market is, however, bifurcated when it comes to prices, with the high end and the low end holding relatively well and the mid-market struggling. For example, the $1 million-plus market accounted for 28 percent of all sales — which is almost as big a slice as it accounted for pre-recession. And, one source said the $5 million-and-up range has seen a flurry of activity in the last six to eight weeks.
