All right, all right! Here it is! I received a demanding e-mail which I must say I appreciate from an anonymous reader who is anxiously awaiting the weekly update. My apologies for the wait: it was my turn to cook tonight, and my turn means picking up "bone" bread at Rosalie's, going to the Bug M (there's never anything in the house), searching for a recipe (Joey's Italian cookbook provided a new sauce), getting wine from the wine store (Ecco Domani chianti - quite good!) while the lasagna baked, then eating it all - mostly, I left the bread and a glass of wine for the ZSU/St. John's game which is DVRd.
There are currently 118 active listings in the Skaneateles area. Four new ones came on, actually two re-lists (village and lake rights) and two new ones (waterfront and lake rights). The numbers are staying down, but they will increase as the spring arrives - whenever that is!
There are 6 marked as contingent with one new one - village, listed over 6 months. It's as if you have to "do your time" before you get a sale.
Eight homes have closed so far this year, three new ones since I last wrote. It's a good mix - town, village and lake rights. Amazingly it's the lake rights one that's the lowest and the village home was the most reduced, more than a third off its original price. Pricing any home is difficult these days!
Last year nine homes had closed. The average was approximately $550,000. This year the average is somewhere around $200,000. I am sure that will climb as well.
And Syracuse itself is in the top 20 real estate markets in the country, and the only one in New York State in the top 20. Alabama and Texas have quite a few communities in good shape, but only Syracuse has shown an increase of 25% in the price of homes in the past five years to make this mark. Check it out: http://blog.syracuse.com/news/2009/02/housingappreciation.pdf. Thank you to another faithful reader for providing us with this link!
Now - SU has started playing, Boo apparently has snagged my slice of bread, and President Obama will speak in less than an hour. But we are updated for another week!
