Long Island Housing Prices, Sales Continue Decline

LONG ISLAND, NY — Housing prices across Long Island continued to fall in October, showing signs that the increase in interest rates has finally started to curb the meteoric rise in real estate costs.

According to new data from OneKey Multiple Listing Service, the median sale price in Nassau County in October was $675,000, down $25,000 from a month prior. In Suffolk, the median sales price held steady from September to October at $550,000.

Those prices, however, are still well over where they were a year ago. October 2021 saw a median sales price of $650,000 in Nassau and $517,750 in Suffolk County.

Both Nassau and Suffolk reached all-time high housing prices this July. Nassau reached a record median sales price of $720,000, and Suffolk was at $575,000.

Prices are still nowhere near their pre-pandemic levels, though. The median sales price in January 2020 was $529,000 in Nassau County and $400,000 in Suffolk.

While prices are still high, the number of sales is way down. Sales usually slow in the autumn, but there were 1,035 homes sold in Nassau in October, down more than 24 percent from the year prior. In Suffolk, there were 1,226 sales — a drop of more than 28 percent.

Real estate professionals said the decline is sales is due to the season, but also rising interest rates. Rates on 30-year mortgages has more than doubled over the last year, going from 3 percent in October 2021 to an average of more than 7 percent today.