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Wall Street, Housing Woes Hit The Hamptons

There goes the neighborhood. I first talked about the Hamptons, the playground for America’s rich on the East Coast, back on June 5 due to a little foreclosure problem they were having. Now, I understand that the east end of Long Island, New York, is having a bigger problem related to home sales and prices. Bloomberg’s Sharon L. Lynch and Laura Marcinek wrote yesterday:

The Hamptons housing market is feeling the heat of Wall Street’s meltdown.

Second-quarter sales volume dropped 29 percent and the median price fell 11 percent to $735,000 from a year earlier in the resort communities on the East End of New York’s Long Island, Suffolk Research Service Inc. said in a report today…

Bloomberg attributes the decline in sales and prices to tough times on Wall Street. According to Wednesday’s piece:

Transactions are dropping as financial firms have cut more than 93,000 jobs and taken more than $416 billion in mortgage- related losses and writedowns. The retreat in global stock markets, waning consumer confidence and the deepening housing recession are also keeping prospective buyers at bay.

Source: L Nichols Woodcarving

Looking at the individual towns, Lynch and Marcinek noted:

In Southampton, the median price dropped 8.6 percent to $891,000. Sales volume fell 35 percent to 257 homes. In East Hampton, prices fell 11 percent to a median of $1,000,000, Suffolk Research said. Volume there fell 40 percent to 120 homes…

In Southold, prices fell 8 percent to $507,500 and sales dropped 19 percent. On Shelter Island, the median price rose 34 percent to $1.13 million, while sales fell 26 percent to 17. The cost to buy in Riverhead also rose, up 9.6 percent to a median of $411,100, while transactions gained 3 percent to 103 properties.

Source:

“Hamptons House Prices Fall Amid Wall Street’s Decline (Update4)”
Sharon L. Lynch, Laura Marcinek
Bloomberg, July 16, 2008