NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — New York City and Long Island’s housing markets continue to be turbulent as renters and buyers attempt to recover from the pandemic.
Last year, the prices of homes across Long Island had surged as people fleeing New York City sought to purchase property in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
According to new data, that surge has continue into 2021, with Suffolk seeing a nearly 18% jump in home prices and Nassau seeing a 13% increase.
Though, the reasons seem to be much different this year.
In 2020, the surge in home prices was due to buyers offering much more than sellers’ asking prices. Real estate agent Lisa Kennedy, of Ramsay Realtors, told WCBS 880, at the time, that homes were selling within days of listing, and many buyers were willing to waive inspections, wrote letters to the sellers about why they wanted to buy the house and were waiving the appraisal contingency.
Now, it seems that the prices of homes are being driven by the sellers, Kennedy said.
“The sellers are coming to the point where they're like, ‘Oh I'm going to get X, X, X, X, X and I'm smarter than the agents that are doing this professionally so, I'm gonna list it at this high, crazy number,’” Kennedy said. “It's not that I don't think [homebuyers] over bidding – they are. But, they're not over bidding when somebody listd their home at an unrealistic number.”
The result is that homes are now sitting empty on the market for longer than a year ago as the state continues to deal with an affordable housing crisis.
In fact, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, in March, called for developers to begin including more affordable housing options when building up downtown areas, as more and more people were being forced to leave because there are no options for them.
Kennedy even acknowledged this, saying that some people were selling their homes and then living with family, friends or in motels because they could not find another place to live.
The situation only worsens when looking at the five boroughs, which has already surpassed San Francisco as the U.S. city with the highest apartment rental prices.
Just last month, a report from Zumper showed the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City was $2,810. It was the first time New York had been ahead of San Francisco since the rental agency started tracking data in 2014.
“This was unthinkable even two years ago,” Zumper said in its report.
Still, StreetEasy’s Nancy Wu told the Financial Times this month that demand in the rental sector continues to rise, even as rent starts to return to almost pre-pandemic levels for several neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, New York City landlords continue to fight back against the state’s eviction moratorium – which was recently extended through January 2022.
It remains unclear if city landlords will be successful in their attempt to roll back rental protections, but if they are, it would potentially put hundreds of thousands of renters at risk of becoming homeless.