Like the Catskills themselves, the local real-estate market has its ups and downs. Right now, prices for single-family homes in Ulster County are on a strong upward slope.
According to data from the county Multiple Listing Service (MLS), the first half-year of 2021 saw a consolidation of the markedly higher sales prices for single-family residences established in 2020. The median sales price of $332,200 in the first half of 2021 was 32 percent higher than the $250,000 recorded in the last quarter of 2019. In 2016, the median sales price had been $200,000.
Ulster County home prices are tied into what is happening in the huge New York metropolitan area. In terms of population, Ulster County constitutes less than one percent of that immense marketplace. New York City home prices have been more or less static for many years, with some neighborhoods ascendant and others declining.
To get a bead on what’s happening at the county level within the New York megalopolis, we tracked the median sales prices at the county level in the first quarter of 2021, as assembled by the New York State Association of Realtors (NYSAR).
The geographic pattern is clear. Single-home sales prices in the New York City counties increased in a year-on-year comparison by an average of about seven percent in the first quarter of 2021 over the same quarter in 2020. Prices in the interior suburban counties of Nassau and Westchester went up by twelve or13 percent. The price increases in the ring of suburban counties beyond that averaged about 15 to 17 percent. And the mid-Hudson counties of Orange (+22.8), Dutchess (+27.4), Ulster (also +27.4), and Sullivan (+35.2) showed more marked sales-price hikes, as did the prices in the more rural and exurban counties of Greene, Columbia and Delaware — where the number of sales was so small as to make the data less statistically reliable.
The sales pattern in the remainder of New York State is mixed. According to the NYSAR data, the price of the median house in New York State as a whole rose from $290,000 in the first quarter of 2020 to $357,000 in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 23.1 percent.
Most experts in the field attribute the change in prices to a number of variables, with increases in the geographic dispersion of knowledge workers due to the pandemic the most common of them. The spread of the Airbnb phenomenon and the expense and decreased viability of urban living are also usually cited as substantial contributors.
A good barometer of real-estate activity is the median days a property is on market before it sells. It was 69 days in the last quarter of 2019, 89 days in the first half of 2020, 33 days in the second half, and 40 days on market in the first half of this year. When a broker urges a client to put in a bid quickly, he or she is not kidding.
A county’s inventory of homes for sale is another indicator. In the first quarter of this year, according to NYSAR data, Ulster County had a 2, 4-month supply of homes for sale, down considerably from last year’s supply of 5.7 months. The corresponding statewide figures were 2.9 months and 4.7 months.
What does the Case-Shiller index of single-family home prices in the 20 metropolitan areas with the largest populations show? First of all, there was no difference between the rate of price increase for the 20 largest urban areas and for the nation as a whole: In April, each showed a 14.7 percent increase year-on-year. Secondly, three western metropolitan areas – Phoenix, San Diego and Seattle – exhibited price growth greater than did the index for all 20. Thirdly, prices in the New York consolidated metro area as whole gained 13.5 percent – lower than average but not too shabby.
“Housing prices accelerated their surge in April 2021,” said Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at the numbers-crunching firm. “The national composite index marked its eleventh consecutive month of accelerating prices …. This acceleration is also reflected in the city composite.” Lazzara said. He noted that the market’s strength was broadly based. “April’s performance was truly extraordinary. The 14.6 percent gain in the national composite is literally the highest reading in more than 30 years of data.”
This researcher, like many others, has suggested that the strength in the U.S. housing market was driven in part by reaction to the pandemic, as potential buyers moved from urban apartments to suburban homes. Or the demand surge might simply represent an acceleration of purchases that would have occurred anyway over the next several years. Alternatively, he speculated in the language economists employ, there may have been a secular change in locational preferences, leading to a permanent shift in the demand curve for housing.
At $332,200, the Ulster County median selling price for single-family residences in the first six months of 2021 was slightly higher than the median asking price of $329,900. In other words, some homes were selling for more than their asking prices. Local real-estate professionals will be glad to regale their listeners with tales of bidding wars for many properties and of houses that had been sold the same day that they had been listed.
With the demand surge continuing, 2021 might well end up as the first year ever that the total price of all Ulster County homes sold might hit a billion dollars.
For the homeowners, that change represents a huge growth in assets. For renters, it spells real trouble.
A two percent county tax on all single-family residential sales could produce a revenue stream of $20 million a year to subsidize affordable housing. State legislation would probably be required, and the real-estate industry would probably be bitterly opposed.
There was a time not so long ago when rent-paying Ulster County residents would wonder whether they might be able to swing buying a starter home or fixer-upper priced under $100,000. With prices rising before the pandemic in the last quarter of 2019, Ulster County’s MLS had reported that 132 out of 1665 sold properties had sold for under $100,000. Not a huge number, but many a seeker saw it as something to work with.
In the first half of 2020, the number of houses sold in that range had dropped precipitously to 44 out of 653. By the second half of last year, the number was 31 out of 1265. And the first half of 2021 pretty much sounded the death knell of that dream. According to MLS, a grand total of eleven Ulster County houses out of 946 sold for under $100,000.
Let’s work with $200,000 instead. In the last quarter of 2019, 561 MLS-listed single-family homes sold for less that amount, constituting more than a third of the total properties sold. In the first half of this year, Ulster County MLS sold houses in that price range had dropped precipitously to 149, or less than a sixth of all single-family properties sold.
At the top end, the million-dollar homes, the picture is more complicated. In the last quarter of 2018, prior to the pandemic, 49 million-dollar Ulster County homes were sold. With its onset in the first half of 2020, the sales market was momentarily paralyzed, and only 15 such listed homes were sold. That total recovered to 49 transactions in the second half of last year. It was 36 in the first half of 2021. Locational preferences may have changed. Further analysis is needed.
Join the family! 
