Ulster County home prices spiked 20 percent last year

Amid scarce inventory, the median price of a single-family home climbed to $349K, up from $290K in 2020

Ulster County, NY (iStock)
Ulster County, NY (iStock)

House hunters experiencing sticker shock throughout the Hudson Valley last year found little respite in the Catskills.

The median sale price for a single-family home in Ulster County jumped to $349,000 last year, a 20 percent increase from 2020, according to Hudson Valley One, which cited data from the county’s multiple listing service. Prices were already elevated in the area during the pandemic: Last year’s spike came on the heels of a 13 percent jump from 2019 to 2020.

Numbers from the New York State Association of Realtors tell a similar story, indicating that the county’s median sale price hit $360,000 in the third quarter (fourth-quarter figures are not yet available).

Like in other markets, scarce supply is driving up prices. The county had just four months’ worth of available housing in the third quarter, the publication reported, about half the inventory it had in the same period in 2019.

The amount of deals on both ends of the pricing spectrum show how much the market has changed in a short time.

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On the low end, 235 homes sold for below $100,000 in Ulster County 2017, representing about 14 percent of sales. Last year, 25 homes sold for under $100,000, or less than 2 percent of sales. Sales of at least $1 million increased from 17 in 2017 to 83 last year, according to Hudson Valley One.

The median sales price remains far lower than in Westchester County, where it jumped to $780,000 last year, according to data from Houlihan Lawrence.

But Ulster and its neighboring counties appear to be closing that gap. Whereas the median sale price of a single-family home rose 6.1 percent year-over-year in Westchester, in Putnam County it jumped 16 percent to $440,000. In Dutchess County, it increased 14.7 percent to $390,000.

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[Hudson Valley One] — Holden Walter-Warner