I started to get excited when I saw the the number of active listings in the Skaneateles area - 139 - had dropped by one from last week yet there were 8 new listings this past week. How could that be? Certainly one or two could be withdrawn or expired, but more likely they were sold.
The new listings were divided between re-lists (3) and new construction (4). There's also an intriguing brand new home for sale which appears to be near 80 acres that are now on the market for $1,000,000 (give or take a thousand of two.....) Incredible views, I would imagine, and a great opportunity to build.
The number of contingent homes has dropped to 9 and pending ones seemed fairly static, so......
Yes! Four homes were reported as closed this past week. Hooray! Take that, 2007! You only had 2 homes close that same week!
Again, this was simple division: 1 new construction, 1 waterfront, 1 lakerights, and 1 village. I thought it was interesting that the waterfront and the village home both sold within 5% of their listing price, while the others conceded reductions. The new construction came in 10% off the price while the lakerights was 25% down. Both had been on for a while, but then so had the waterfront.
There are now 43 closed for this year as compared to 80 last year up to this moment.
For the past few weeks I've watched a new section of the Sunday Post-Standard that lists the five most expensive properties that close the previous week in Onondaga County. The first week the numbers were dismal - in the $200,000 range. That doesn't sit well when 4 of my listings are above $200,000. The next week was better - the lowest was $300,000, but I also knew that was a transfer of property within a family, not a true marketed sale. This past week added homes in the $500,000 range - and yes, several were the Skaneateles closed properties.
I take from this that there are buyers out there ready, willing and able to buy expensive homes. Or that there are homes beginning to sell elsewhere which allow for sales to take place here. We may have a fantastic finish to the year yet!
