By Holly Dutton
The rich are pouring into the Hamptons, according to latest sales reports from major brokerages.
Douglas Elliman pegged the median price of all homes sold in the quarter at $975,000, a 27 percent increase from a year earlier and the highest since 2007.
The average sales price increased 31 percent to $2,062,072. The number of sales umped 48 percent to 734.
Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel who compiles the report fro Elliman, said the numbers are reflective of “a second-home market that is skewing toward wealthier purchasers. There are more of them coming back into the market,” he told Bloomberg news.
According to the 2014 Fourth Quarter Corcoran Report, prices are climbing amid a surge in higher-end deals.
Corcoran saw Hamptons prices increase by 21 percent while sales activity declined by eight percent.
Average and median prices both increased by 32 and 22 percent, respectively, compared to a year ago, marking the second consecutive quarter there was a significant increase.
The average sales price for a home in the 4Q of 2013 was $1.763 million, according to Corcoran, while in the 4Q of 2014, the average sale price was $2.322 million. Median sale price jumped from $889,000 in the 4Q of 2013 to $1.085 million in the 4Q of 2014.
Meanwhile, median sales prices for Nassau and Suffolk counties (excluding the Hamptons and North Fork) was $362,000, up from 0.6 percent from the same time period last year. The average sales price was slightly higher, consistent with the increased performance of the luxury market. Average sales price was $458,523, an increase of 2.6 percent year-over-year.
Median sales prices of the luxury market stayed above the $1 million mark, rising 6.1 percent to $1,057,000 over the same time period despite no significant change in the entry threshold of $753,000.
Rising housing prices drew more inventory into the market after bottoming out at 12,801 in the same time period last year. There were 13,517 listings in the 4Q, 5.6 percent above the prior year low, but 48.3 percent below the peak of 26,145 in 2Q of 2008.
