Real Estate

Hamptons Real Estate Market Breaks Records in 2020


As New York City’s real estate market foundered during the pandemic in 2020, home sales in the Hamptons boomed.

It began with a rush for spring rentals. New Yorkers sought beach access and airy quarters months earlier than they had in previous years. Then, as the weather warmed, many of those renters, who were paying exorbitant monthly prices, began to buy. Others joined them, and the buying spree continued through the fall and winter, as the housing supply on the East End of Long Island dwindled and prices climbed.

Sales in the Hamptons rose annually at the highest rate in a decade, according to a new report from Douglas Elliman. For the year 2020, the median sale price hit $1,202,500, a 40 percent increase from 2019 and the first time the year-end price broke the million-dollar threshold. The number of sales for the year rose by 37 percent, to 2,186, compared with 1,597 in 2019.

Record-low mortgage rates have enabled buyers to pay inflated home prices, and many Manhattan office workers who have spent the pandemic working from homes on the East End have helped turn the Hamptons and the North Fork into year-round communities, at least for now.

“The East End has, to a large degree, been the beneficiary of the challenges faced in the city,” said Jonathan Miller, an appraiser and the author of the year-end report. “This region is having its day.”

In Manhattan, agents and sellers have suffered through a grim year, seeing only glimmers of a recovery. The ban on showings early in the pandemic shut down the market, which did not rebound to 2019 levels when it opened back up. More than 400,000 New Yorkers left the city last spring to wait out the pandemic elsewhere, and many extended their plans to stay away from New York.

In the Hamptons, sales and prices broke records even in the usually sleepy months at the end of the year. In the fourth quarter, sales more than doubled compared with the year before, with 803 sales, according to the Douglas Elliman report, and the median home price increased by 55 percent, to $1.4 million.

The price uptick, however, is less about rising prices in the overall market and more about strong sales activity at the high end, Mr. Miller said, as affluent New Yorkers and other buyers who fled to the East End of Long Island paid prices that took the high end to new heights. Corcoran reported that the number of sales in the Hamptons over $5 million nearly tripled in the fourth quarter, and the median sale price for the luxury market — defined as the top 10 percent of sales — rose 12 percent, to $7.2 million.

One result of all this activity: a decreasing supply across the market. The number of listings dropped 9 percent, to 1,745, versus 1,919 in the same period last year, according to Douglas Elliman.



Sahred From Source link Real Estate

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