Long Island home prices shrink as sales plunge

The Long Island housing market continued its post-pandemic swoon last month, as home prices fell back and sales plummeted. 

There were 1,843 Long Island homes contracted for sale in November, down 12.6 percent from the 2,110 pending sales in the previous month and a drop of 34.4 percent from the 2,812 homes that were contracted for sale in Nov. 2021, according to preliminary numbers from OneKey MLS. 

The number of Long Island home sales this November was the lowest number of November home sales in the last eight years. 

Home sales on Long Island have seen year-over-year declines since the pandemic buying frenzy began to wane in the second half of last year. There were 26,628 homes contracted for sale in Nassau and Suffolk counties in the first 11 months of this year, a nearly 20.9 percent drop from the 33,651 pending sales in the first 11 months of 2021. 

Home prices have been falling. The median price of closed home sales in Nassau last month was $670,000, a drop of $25,000 from the $695,000 median price in September and the lowest median price since the $668,000 median recorded in April. 

In Suffolk, the median price of closed home sales last month was $545,000, a drop of $5,000 from September and October, and the lowest median price since April’s median of $540,000. 

Still, Long Island home prices are higher than they were a year ago. Nassau’s median price of closed home sales last month is almost 2.3 percent higher than the $655,000 median recorded in Nov. 2021. Suffolk’s median price of closed home sales last month is 4.8 percent higher than the $520,000 median recorded in Nov. 2021. 

While mortgage rates for a 30-year fixed loan are currently averaging around 6.6 percent and more than double what they were a year ago, they haven’t impacted prices as much as expected because inventory remains historically low. There were 6,100 homes listed for sale with OneKey MLS—2,811 in Nassau and 3,289 in Suffolk—as of Tuesday, which is down 7.7 percent from the 6,612 homes that were listed for sale at the end of October.