Residential sales in the Hamptons jumped again in the second quarter of 2017, with the higher end of the market seeing the most activity.
However, while sales have picked up following a lackluster 2016, prices are still not back to their pre-Lehman Brothers levels, according to the quarterly report from Douglas Elliman. Overall, sales jumped nearly 23 percent from last year to hit 689.The greatest increases were at the higher end of the market. While sales in the under $1 million market increased 15.1 percent, sales in the over-$5 million market increased 45.5 percent. Sales above $10 million were up 100 percent on last year, according to the report.
Inventory also dropped for the eighth consecutive quarter, which is a similar trend in Manhattan. Overall, inventory fell 4.1 percent year-over-year. On the luxury end of the market, which is $3.9 million and above, inventory fell by 10.7 percent.
“It doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of supply, it means that part of the market is healing,” said Jonathan Miller, the CEO of appraisal firm Miller Samuel and author of the report. “A lot of the over-priced product on the high end has expired.”
The median sale price in the Hamptons hit $1.03 million last quarter, which is the second high level on record. The record median price is $1.1 million, which was reached in the second of 2007. The median single-family home price last quarter was $1.07 million, a record for that sector of the market. For the luxury end, the median sale price was almost $6.2 million.
“We’re just approaching the records that were set a decade ago,” said Miller of prices. “It’s close but it hasn’t beaten them… there is a perception that we broke the record a long time ago, like we did in Manhattan. We haven’t.”
Almost 9 percent of sales in the second quarter sold above ask, which means there was a bidding war, up from nearly 7 percent the year before. In the luxury market, the share of sales going for above the list price was almost 5 percent.
“It’s not that it’s a frenzied market, we are grinding higher,” said Miller. “The market improved, but the market is still soft at the top, and is stronger as you move lower in price.”