North Fork Market Indicators Show An Incline At End Of This Year

Published: January 17, 2010

A Cutchogue waterfront home. Properties courtesy of The Corcoran Group.

The North Fork - Everything is relative, especially in real estate as new market indicators show a strengthening real estate market on the North Fork where prices and sales dipped with national trends though not as dramatically as those suffered on the South Fork.

According to research conducted by Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the number of sales rose as listing inventory expanded on the North Fork for the third quarter of 2009.

A Southold home among the year end listings.

In total, 120 sales were conducted in the third quarter, up 22.4 percent from 98 sales conducted in the same time last year. That increase jumps to 57.9 percent when compared to the 76 sales conducted in the second quarter of 2009.

Also on the rise was the number of listings, which topped out at 684 available listings for the third portion of the year, up 59.1 percent from the 430 listings available for the same period last year. Alas, the rise in the number of sales "more than offset the rise in listing inventory, causing the monthly absorption rate to decline."

According to the report, monthly absorption is clculated by the number of months to sell all listing inventory "at the current pace of sales." The monthly absorption rate, which had averaged 14.5 months over the past two years, climbed to 17.1 months in the third quarter and spiraled down from a 24.6 month high in the second.

A Cutchogue vineyard is among the listings for the end of the year.

And what do all these numbers mean, in a nut shell real estate sales the North Fork has begun to inch their way back to a new normal. In relation to overall East End sales, the North Fork accounts for 26.1 percent of all sales and 13.4 percent of overall sales volume. The median sales price climbed some 6.1 percent from $450,000 in the second to $477,00 in the third. Similarly, the average sales price was $685,467, some 9.3 percent higher than the $627.204 of the prior quarter. Acording to analysts, "the surge in the number of sales helped the price indicators see increases over the summer."

As a final indicator of things to come, the 'days on market' average was 155 days in third quarter, down 8.3 percent from 169 days from the prior quarter. "The stablized days on market and decline in the listing discount are consistent with the surge in the number of sales," the report concludes.