Californians sick of high prices and extreme weather are buying up Hudson Valley homes en masse.
Realtors in the counties north of New York City are reporting an influx of Californians competing with Manhattan and Brooklyn residents for new homes in the region. One agent estimated to the Times-Union that over half of her buyers are now from the West Coast and that the clientele from the area is up 50 percent since the pandemic began.
Other realtors note that the communities in the region are good fits for creative types, especially those who want easy access to the city without actually living there. Walkable communities like Hudson and Germantown are of particular interest.
“Even down in Los Feliz, the fires were getting to us — the soot in the air, the yellow sky,” said homebuyer Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who relocated from L.A. to Hudson in October. “We began to think, this is not the heaven it was.”
One factor behind the migration is home prices. Low housing inventory has been driving up home prices across the country, but Californians are feeling the squeeze much more tightly than Hudson Valley residents.
The California Association of Realtors reported that the median price for a single-family home in California was $818,260 in May, a 39.1 percent increase from the year before.
Meanwhile, data from the New York State Association of Realtors shows the median price of a single-family home in Dutchess County in the first quarter was just $360,000, while it was $329,000 in Columbia County, though prices were on the rise in the second quarter.
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[Times-Union] — Holden Walter-Warner