A few weeks ago, Marie Beninati, owner of Beninati Associates in Southold, was preparing to show a couple from elsewhere on Long Island some North Fork homes. The three narrowed their search down to eight properties, Ms. Beninati said, and planned to meet a few days later to tour as many of the houses as they could.
When that day came, about 72 hours later, the longtime broker said, three homes on the couple’s list had already received accepted purchase offers.
They were, in effect, “gone,” she said.
According to a Suffolk Research Service Inc. report issued Monday, the dwindling supply of houses on the market that has increasingly concerned Ms. Beninati and others is due to the fact that sales skyrocketed last year compared to 2012 and 2011.
The Hampton Bays real estate research service’s president, George Simpson, described the East End market as now “booming.”
His numbers show Suffolk County’s five eastern towns have seen a 61 percent increase in sales since 2011, with the median price for single family houses rising by 4 percent from 2012 to 2013.
Fourth quarter 2013 numbers, which the service just released, show that 116 housing units were sold in Riverhead Town, compared with 74 in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 60 during the same period in 2011.
Southold Town saw 159 houses sold in the fourth quarter of 2013, compared with 86 during the same three-month stretch of 2012.
The trend of dwindling housing stock and rising home prices has been going on for about “six months or so,” Ms. Beninati said, adding that rising prices isn’t ideal, but it is natural after a downturn and/or a prolonged buyer’s market to see the pendulum swing toward more of a seller’s market.
According to a Long Island Decade Survey of Residential Sales report for 2013 compiled by The Douglas Elliman Report series, there were 12,801 homes for sale on Long Island in 2013 as opposed to 14,574 in 2012 — a decrease of 12.2 percent.
“It’s economics 101: supply and demand,” said Ms. Beninati. “The supply is low, the demand is high and the result is higher prices.”
Ms. Beninati attributes the trend of rising prices and diminishing stock to several factors, including pent-up demand stemming from the recent recession. As for the low inventory, she mentioned also that many homeowners wait until spring to put their houses on the market.
Other experts also said many homeowners choose to wait until spring to put their houses up — so being unable to find a home in January might not be anything a prospective buyer should worry about.
“Inventory is always down in the wintertime,” said Keith Uhl, a real estate agent at Landmark Realty in Wading River. “A lot of homeowners choose [to stay out of] the market in the winter.”
As the broker and owner of Lewis and Nickles Realty in Southold, John Nickles has been selling real estate on the North Fork for the past 52 years, he said, and in his opinion, the market is moving in the right direction.
“I think it’s an exaggeration to say there are no houses,” he said. “I looked the other day and there were 95 houses [for sale] in Southold. I think the market has reached a balance. We’ve had a buyer’s market for the last several years. Now it’s going to transition back into a seller’s market, which occurs when there’s less inventory.”
According to the 2013 Douglas Elliman Report, the median sales price for a home in Suffolk County increased 2.6 percent last year, from $302,000 in 2012 to $310,000 in 2013.
“I expect this year to see a little bit of an incremental increase in value — one or two percent — because of the lack of supply,” Mr. Nickles said.
In Wading River, Mr. Uhl said, prices have indeed “clicked up a little bit in some areas.”
Overall, said Valerie Goode, broker and owner of Colony Realty in Jamesport, real estate is a solid investment — and she doesn’t see that changing.
“Real estate is a lot more real than a stock or a bond,” Ms. Goode said. It’s an actual thing. You can grow food on [a property]. You can live in it. You can rent it.”
As for that couple to whom Ms. Beninati was showing North Fork houses last month?
They haven’t found one yet, she said. But they’re going to keep looking — even through the winter.
