The weather is wonderful, warm but not too warm, a breeze blowing in, low humidity and plenty of sunshine. I am planning on taking pictures this afternoon if it holds. The Fair starts today - so summer is waning.
There are currently 148 (or so) active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service. Of these, 31 are in the village and 33 are lake waterfront. I say "or so" because two are listed twice - once for the village and another time for the town. Our service is new, and the village separation is part of the upgrade. However, once is enough - they appear both in the town and the village if cited as village. Of course, the opposite is true - one listing is not placed in the village, which it is, and so only appears in the town. Sigh.....better to be seen twice than not at all! It just messes up the statistics a bit.
So five listings are actually new, not simply re-submitted in a new category. Two are re-lists of homes previously on the market - one increased the price about $20,000 and the other decreased it. We'll see which sells first. Both of these are in the town and under $300,000. The other three new ones are also town listings in the same price range, but slightly lower.
There are 10 homes marked contingent, two of which are newly reported. One is a small home in the town like the new ones just cited. The other is glorious waterfront listed well over one million dollars. It's taken a few years for both properties, but they do have contracts. Congratulations!
As well as these 10, there are 17 marked under contract, do not show, or pending. The listing price range is $70,000 to $800,000. All of a sudden everything will start to close!
We now have 42 closed properties year-to-date. A waterfront estate, listed well over a million dollars but selling rapidly, closed 8% under the original listing price. A village home closed at 15% under the list price, but again was not listed for an extremely long time.
These 42 closings compare with 54 by this time last year, so we have a bit of catch-up to do. However, we are far ahead of the disastrous 2008 when only 30 properties had closed and the slow-down had seriously impacted Skaneateles. Compare that to 65 in 2009 and it is apparent we are on our way back, just not there yet.
To finish on a positive note - I hope you saw that Syracuse was cited by CNNMoney.com as the most affordable city in the United States! They made this claim because 97% of the population made enough money to afford the median home. It's a different market, to be sure, than Skaneateles - the median in the city is about $84,000. But it does bring attention to all the reasons to live, work and invest in Central New York.
