Long Island home shoppers are finally seeing a ray of sunshine.
The percentage of houses on the market that have dropped in price at least once is at its highest level in three years, Newsday reported.
Among Nassau County homes for sale, 35 percent have dropped in price since being listed, up from 27 percent a year ago. In Suffolk County, sellers have cut prices on 32 percent of homes, up from 24 percent last year. The analysis was done by San Francisco-based Altos Research.
The price cuts are not the result of an increase in home listings; the inventory crunch is still pronounced. Many sellers are still entertaining multiple offers, often above the asking price.
But with mortgage rates about twice what they were a year ago, buyers can only bid so much. Sellers unwilling to budge on a listing price that might have made sense last year might see buyers pass them by.
“Everybody remembers what their house is worth on the highest possible day,” Coach Realtors associate broker Mary Alice Ruppert told Newsday.
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Even with some asking prices falling, buyers are still contending with high prices. Sales prices hit highs and bidding wars increased in both of Long Island’s counties last quarter, according to Jonathan Miller’s report for Douglas Elliman.
The median price of one- to three-family homes and condos sold in the second quarter was $620,000, up from $605,000 the previous quarter and $585,000 a year earlier. The average price was $720,000, up from $703,000 and $693,000, respectively.
Inventory, meanwhile, is stuck at half of pre-pandemic levels because the frenzy of homebuying triggered by low mortgage rates and the pandemic ate up listings. Last quarter, 57.4 percent of Long Island home sales were for above the last asking price, only slightly off the record of 59.2 percent set the previous quarter.
— Holden Walter-Warner