[Stable and Sandy] 1Q 2012 Hamptons/North Fork Sales Report

Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Thursday, April 26, 2012, 2:36 PM
3 Comments

We published our report on Hamptons/North Fork sales for 1Q 2012 this morning.   I’ve been authoring this report series for Douglas Elliman since 1994.

Here are some takeaways:

Overall housing prices (median sales price up 1.2% ) continued to show stability.The luxury market showed larger year over year increases in the price indicators than the overall market.Number of sales were up nominally from same period last year (0.5%).Listing inventory is down sharply year over year (down 17.5%) – home sellers are more cautious about entering the market (ie sales flat but inventory falling).Properties taking somewhat longer to sell and there is a little more negotiability on price between buyer and seller (days on market and listing discount expanded)Despite strength in prices at high end, we saw an uptick in market share of sub-million sales – the decline in mortgage rates and warm weather brought buyers out sooner.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

Median sales price edged up 1.2% to $630,000 from $622,500 in the prior year quarter. Average sales price increased 17% to $1,437,597 from $1,228,857 over the same period, largely due to continued strength at the upper end of the market. In the median sales price by quintile analysis, the fifth quintile increased 24.8% yearover- year, while the remainder of the market segments showed modest change and mixed results over the same period…

I’ve got a tool to build custom data tables and view charts on the market.

View the original article here

Homeowners Hit by Sandy May Save Thousands of Dollars

How is a hurricane deductible different from your basic homeowner policy deductible? It is based on a percentage of your property's insured value, and it can be up to 5 percent. So let's say your home is insured for $300,000. That's a $15,000 deductible, which is likely far higher than your regular deductible. The average homeowner deductible is between $500 and $1000.

"We have informed the insurance industry that hurricane deductibles are not triggered because Sandy did not have sustained hurricane-force winds when it made land in New York," noted NY's Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky in the release. "We will be working with insurers to help them respond as quickly as possible to homeowners who need to file claims. And we will be sending our mobile command center to hard hit areas to help consumers with insurance questions and problems."

(Read More: Trains Roll, but Northeast Struggles Back From Sandy.)

There is very specific language in homeowner insurance policies in terms of hurricane deductibles. Usually the storm has to reach specific wind speeds to trigger the deductible. A state governor couldn't necessarily override that private contract.

"The way the insurers look at it is that this is a private contract between the insurer and the policy holder, and the policy as written is going to be enforced," noted Michael Barry of the Insurance Information Institute. "In this case Sandy does not appear to have reached the threshold to activate the hurricane deductible."

The insurance companies probably didn't need Governor Cuomo's directive as such, since they were already doing their own assessments immediately following the storm. (Read More: Sandy's Economic Cost: Up to $50 Billion and Counting.)

"We have done a review of the best available National Weather Service data and compared that to our language, and we have determined that the hurricane deductible will not apply in those states," said State Farm spokesman Phil Supple.

As for how much the difference in the deductibles will cost the nation's insurance companies, that is impossible to calculate at this point, as the companies are still waiting to get in to the hardest hit areas and tally the damage. It is also, as Supple added, "moot" to do any figuring, as they higher deductible clearly doesn't apply.

—By CNBC's Diana Olick; Follow Her on Twitter @Diana_Olick and Facebook.Questions? Comments? RealtyCheck@cnbc.com

Click on ticker to follow real estate news:

Construction & General Building Materials

—The Home Depot
—Lowe's Companies
—The Sherwin-WIlliams Company
—E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
—Apogee Enterprises

View the original article here

Homeowners Hit by Sandy May Save Thousands of Dollars

The fact that Hurricane Sandy was downgraded to a “Post-Tropical Cyclone” before it made landfall on the East Coast will save homeowners potentially thousands of dollars in home insurance deductibles. 

Homes in Seaside Heights, N.J.New Jersey’s Department of Banking and Insurance Acting Commissioner Ken Kobylowski communicated that to the insurance industry Tuesday night and New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the same Thursday morning.

“Homeowners should not have to pay hurricane deductibles for damage caused by the storm and insurers should understand the Department of Financial Services will be monitoring how claims are handled,” Governor Cuomo said in a release. (Read More: For Builders, the Storm is Good for Business.)

How is a hurricane deductible different from your basic homeowner policy deductible? It is based on a percentage of your property’s insured value, and it can be up to 5 percent. So let’s say your home is insured for $300,000. That’s a $15,000 deductible, which is likely far higher than your regular deductible. The average homeowner deductible is between $500 and $1000.

“We have informed the insurance industry that hurricane deductibles are not triggered because Sandy did not have sustained hurricane-force winds when it made land in New York,” noted NY’s Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky in the release. “We will be working with insurers to help them respond as quickly as possible to homeowners who need to file claims. And we will be sending our mobile command center to hard hit areas to help consumers with insurance questions and problems.”

(Read More: Trains Roll, but Northeast Struggles Back From Sandy.)

There is very specific language in homeowner insurance policies in terms of hurricane deductibles. Usually the storm has to reach specific wind speeds to trigger the deductible. A state governor couldn’t necessarily override that private contract.

“The way the insurers look at it is that this is a private contract between the insurer and the policy holder, and the policy as written is going to be enforced,” noted Michael Barry of the Insurance Information Institute. “In this case Sandy does not appear to have reached the threshold to activate the hurricane deductible.”

The insurance companies probably didn’t need Governor Cuomo’s directive as such, since they were already doing their own assessments immediately following the storm. (Read More: Sandy's Economic Cost: Up to $50 Billion and Counting.)

“We have done a review of the best available National Weather Service data and compared that to our language, and we have determined that the hurricane deductible will not apply in those states,” said State Farm spokesman Phil Supple.

As for how much the difference in the deductibles will cost the nation’s insurance companies, that is impossible to calculate at this point, as the companies are still waiting to get in to the hardest hit areas and tally the damage. It is also, as Supple added, “moot” to do any figuring, as they higher deductible clearly doesn’t apply.

—By CNBC's Diana Olick; Follow Her on Twitter @Diana_Olick and Facebook.
Questions? Comments?document.write("");document.write("RealtyCheck"+"@"+"cnbc.com");document.write('');  

Click on ticker to follow real estate news:

Construction & General Building Materials

—The Home Depot [HD  Loading...      ()   ]
—Lowe's Companies [LOW  Loading...      ()   ]
—The Sherwin-WIlliams Company [SHW  Loading...      ()   ]
—E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company [DD  Loading...      ()   ]
—Apogee Enterprises [APOG  Loading...      ()   ]

View the original article here

[Stable and Sandy] 1Q 2012 Hamptons/North Fork Sales Report

Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Thursday, April 26, 2012, 2:36 PM
3 Comments

We published our report on Hamptons/North Fork sales for 1Q 2012 this morning.   I’ve been authoring this report series for Douglas Elliman since 1994.

Here are some takeaways:

Overall housing prices (median sales price up 1.2% ) continued to show stability.The luxury market showed larger year over year increases in the price indicators than the overall market.Number of sales were up nominally from same period last year (0.5%).Listing inventory is down sharply year over year (down 17.5%) – home sellers are more cautious about entering the market (ie sales flat but inventory falling).Properties taking somewhat longer to sell and there is a little more negotiability on price between buyer and seller (days on market and listing discount expanded)Despite strength in prices at high end, we saw an uptick in market share of sub-million sales – the decline in mortgage rates and warm weather brought buyers out sooner.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

Median sales price edged up 1.2% to $630,000 from $622,500 in the prior year quarter. Average sales price increased 17% to $1,437,597 from $1,228,857 over the same period, largely due to continued strength at the upper end of the market. In the median sales price by quintile analysis, the fifth quintile increased 24.8% yearover- year, while the remainder of the market segments showed modest change and mixed results over the same period…

I’ve got a tool to build custom data tables and view charts on the market.

View the original article here

[Stable and Sandy] 1Q 2012 Hamptons/North Fork Sales Report

Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Thursday, April 26, 2012, 2:36 PM
3 Comments

We published our report on Hamptons/North Fork sales for 1Q 2012 this morning.   I’ve been authoring this report series for Douglas Elliman since 1994.

Here are some takeaways:

Overall housing prices (median sales price up 1.2% ) continued to show stability.The luxury market showed larger year over year increases in the price indicators than the overall market.Number of sales were up nominally from same period last year (0.5%).Listing inventory is down sharply year over year (down 17.5%) – home sellers are more cautious about entering the market (ie sales flat but inventory falling).Properties taking somewhat longer to sell and there is a little more negotiability on price between buyer and seller (days on market and listing discount expanded)Despite strength in prices at high end, we saw an uptick in market share of sub-million sales – the decline in mortgage rates and warm weather brought buyers out sooner.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

Median sales price edged up 1.2% to $630,000 from $622,500 in the prior year quarter. Average sales price increased 17% to $1,437,597 from $1,228,857 over the same period, largely due to continued strength at the upper end of the market. In the median sales price by quintile analysis, the fifth quintile increased 24.8% yearover- year, while the remainder of the market segments showed modest change and mixed results over the same period…

I’ve got a tool to build custom data tables and view charts on the market.

View the original article here

[Sandy] 4Q 2011 Hamptons/North Fork Sales + 2002-2011 Hamptons/North Fork Decade Reports

Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Thursday, January 26, 2012, 11:40 AM
No Comments

We released our report on the Long Island sales market for 4Q 2011 this morning. I’ve been authoring this series for Douglas Elliman since 1994.

We also published a companion report, The Hamptons & North Fork Decade 2002-2011 with a revised format, to lay out out the market in context over an expanded window of time.

Here’s an excerpt from the 4Q 2011 report:

There were 541 sales in the fourth quarter, 0.6% more than 538 sales in the prior year quarter and prior quarter. The level of sales remained above the 5-year average of 484 sales. Despite the relative stability of sales, the number of available listings fell sharply. There were 1,728 listings available at the end of the fourth quarter, 25% less than 2,303 listings at the end of the same quarter last year.

Despite the decline in listing inventory and stability of sales, days on market and listing discount expanded over the year. Days on market, the number of days from the last price change to contract date, was 201 days, 25 days longer than 176 days in the prior year quarter. Listing discount, the percentage difference between the list price at time of contract and the sales price, increased to 13.4% from 9.3% in the prior year quarter.

Median sales price was $675,000, down 7.5% from $730,000 in the prior year quarter. Average sales price followed the same pattern with a decline of 16.2% to $1,335,884 from $1,594,785 in the same period last year. The price indicators in the prior year quarter were pressed upward from the high end skew caused by concern over the potential expiration of the Bush tax cuts and rise in capital gains rate. Buyers and sellers rushed to close before the end of 2010.

The custom data tables are updated and ready for you to play with. The chart section on the new site remains a work in progress.

The Elliman Report: 4Q 2011 Hamptons & North Fork Sales [Prudential Douglas Elliman]
The Elliman Report: 2002-2011 Hamptons & North Fork Sales Decade [Prudential Douglas Elliman]

The Elliman Report: 4Q 2011 Hamptons & North Fork Sales [Miller Samuel]
The Elliman Report: 2002-2011 Hamptons & North Fork Decade [Miller Samuel]

View the original article here