Long Island Housing Market Still Blazing Hot

LONG ISLAND, NY — The coronavirus shutdowns hit the Long Island real estate market hard, slowing sales to a near standstill in the spring. But the market has since recovered, and is going stronger than ever.

The median sale price of homes on Long Island increased from August to September, according to data from One Key Multiple Listing Service, as did the number of homes sold. But that's nothing compared to the year-to-year numbers, which show huge increases from September 2019 to September 2020.

From last year to this year, the median sales price of homes increased 7.29 percent and the number of homes sold went up 5.28 percent. The number of pending home sales jumped a whopping 60.86 percent.

Jim Speer, the CEO of One Key MLS, said that the huge spike in sales and pending sales is most likely caused by the closure of the market due to the coronavirus.

"The market was real, real good until the market got shut down," he said. "Once it came back up, it's been red hot right. Since we didn't really have the spring market, which is the top time of year, what we're seeing now is the spring market plus."

Broken down by county, the numbers remain strong. In Nassau, the median sales price fell by $5,000 from August to September to $590,000. But it was still 9.3 percent higher than last September's median price of $540,000.

The number of homes sold followed a similar trend. Things were down slightly from August to September, but this year's 1,387 home sold was 15.9 percent over last September's 1,197. And pending sales are way up: this September's 1,716 pending sales are 64.5 percent over last year's 1.043.

Suffolk County is looking even better. The median sale price went up by more than $8,300 to $464,357, which is 13.3 percent better than last September.

The number of homes sold in Suffolk was up from August to September, jumping from 1,464 to 1,768. That is also 18 percent more than last September. The pending sales also saw a huge jump, but not as much as Nassau. Pending sales for this September were up 55.1 percent over last year to 2,231, which was a slight drop from this August.

Supply of housing is low and demand is incredibly high, which Speer said makes this a prime seller's market right now. But that won't last forever. Speer said the pent-up demand for housing is likely to last for the rest of the year, and maybe even into early next year. But the demand will eventually level out and the market will get back to normal, he said.