PRICE BOOM, NOT BUILDING BOOM: ULSTER COUNTY HOUSING MARKET
Article Written and Contributed to Ulster Strong by Hayes Clement, Donna Brooks and Harris Safier
Gauging the real estate market, like gauging the weather, means the most when the forecast is truly local. National trends don’t always fit tightly with Ulster County, especially during the past 3 years and the highly publicized exodus of Brooklyn and Manhattan residents for the Hudson Valley. And even before COVID, through decades of market cycles, Ulster County has often followed the beat of its own drummer when it comes to residential real estate.
That drum beats loudly these days.
Following what was already a multi-year sellers’ market, the pandemic super-charged that dynamic in the past 3 years. Intense demand plus lack of supply rocketed the median sale price of a single-family home in Ulster County from $255,000 in 2019, the last full year before the start of the pandemic, to $389,000 today – a 53% increase in three years, according to transaction data from the Hudson Valley Catskill Region Multiple Listing Service. The typical time a house stays on the market plummeted to 32 days (from 69), and activity at the higher end of the market exploded:
In 2019, 183 MLS-listed Ulster County homes sold for $499,000 or more, with 28 of those selling above $1 million; in the past 12 months, 482 homes sold for $499,000 or more (a 163% increase) with no less than 85 of them snagging $1 million or more (a 200% increase). As brokers, we used to be cautious about quantifying the market for million-dollar-plus luxury homes in Ulster County because the yearly number of transactions was often so small that any analytics were statistically invalid. We don’t have that problem anymore.
In select parts of the county, the up trend has been even more dramatic. Exhibit A: Kingston. In 2019, only 5 houses in the City of Kingston sold for $499,000 or more. In 2020, that number rose to 10, and in 2021, it more than doubled again to 27. So far for the first 10 months of this year, we're already at 23 $500,000+ sales in the city, lifting the median sale price of a home in Kingston to $317,500 today, up 60% since the start of the pandemic.
One other key statistic worth notice: The number of annual transactions in the county has not changed much during this period, remaining about 1,600 on average annually and underscoring the continuing shortage of inventory, across all price points, and the challenges would-be homebuilders face in ramping up their activity in a post-COVID world. The housing boom in Ulster County, so far, is largely a price boom, not a building boom.
Booms of any variety can’t last forever, of course, and we do see a mild tapering-down of activity in the market now. Anecdotes about multiple offers and houses selling for more than asking price are not heard nearly as often as even 10 months ago; seasonal slowdowns, around August and the holidays, are back; and even brokers are able to take time off for vacations again.
But, in our view, the bottom line, near- and long-term, remains optimistic for the home market in Ulster County and the mammoth role it plays in fueling economic progress locally. Market highs may come and go but our core fundamentals remain: Extraordinary beauty in a geographically diverse locale (mountains, farmland and the Hudson River, to boot) only 2 hours from the economic capital of the world, New York City. We’ve always enjoyed that, but today, and this is a critical distinction from markets past, it’s supplemented by a large and diverse base of newcomers who’ve experienced our quality of life and are spreading the word to friends.
Hayes Clement, Donna Brooks and Harris Safier, partners in the 12-agent Clement, Brooks & Safier Team at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hudson Valley Properties. With almost $100 million in sales last year, the CBS Team is the top-producing team in the entire Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices northeast network, which extends from New York City to Rhode Island.