Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Skaneateles Real Estate - The Weekly Update

Hooray! The conversion from the old http://syr.mlxchange to the new http://nys.mlxchange has occurred and business goes on as usual for us agents and brokers. Mostly. The conversion brings together all of upstate New York into one site. I used to search as far west a Cayuga County and east to Rome. I now can see Buffalo listings as well as Plattsburgh listings.

Our area is lucky. The system we used to use was the one chosen as the model for the new one, with a few tweaks. We don't have to re-learn how to search for homes or what criteria can be used. We do need to remember to put in the county name and use an "S" before each listing. I'm sure I'll discover more changes as the days go by.

The statistics seem to remain consistent with the old system, if more refined. There are surrently 116 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service. Of these, 27 are in the village. Two new listings came on this week, both in the town and both under $200,000. While this number is lower than last week's 128 active listings, the time of year - holidays coming up, snow soon to fly, the school year in full swing - dictates that listings that haven't sold and might not seed to sell would normally come off the market.

There are 6 properties listed as "C" - under contract but continue to show. One new one was marked contingent - a much sought after lake rights property in the village which came on only a month ago. Seven homes are pending closing. The new designation of "U" - under contract do not show - yields no results.

Two properties closed this week. One country house with land closed for about 80% of the original list price, while a small home closed at 90% of its original list price. Both were listed this year.

That brings to 68 the number of homes that have closed in the Skaneateles area. Last year - all of last year - only 66 closed, a mark we reached last week with 50 days still remaining in the year.

I thought I'd look in on the new Syracuse City area designations. Instead of North, East, South and West there are now 26 neighborhoods. Strathmore, Sedgewick, Outer Comstock, Meadowbrook all make sense. Bob knew Skunk City (around the old House of Providence out West Onondaga), but I sure didn't. I was a Westcott neighborhood girl. Altogether we got lost over 5 of the new neighborhoods - and some need better descriptors than the vague "near" adjectives. And Lakefront? Where? Carousel - oops, I mean Destiny! - Mall area?

But in attempting this exercise, I found a very interesting and telling statistic. In Syracuse there are currently 412 active single family homes listed. This year to date there have been 513 closed homes. 412/513. Now compare that with Skaneateles - 116/68 - and you can readily see which is the hotter market. This bears watching - as do the neighborhoods!