After a hot February and March, the residential market on Long Island’s East End took a step back last month.
While new listings continued to increase, the number of homes that went into contract dipped for the first time in three months, according to a report by appraisal firm Miller Samuel for Douglas Elliman.
“[Data] from all the regions that we’re covering for the month of April shows the market essentially took a breath,” report author Jonathan Miller said.
Contract activity slowed in part due to the banking crisis and uncertainty over whether the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates again, Miller said. (The Fed did raise rates another 0.25 percentage points on May 3, but signaled that it may pause the increases at its next meeting in June.)
“Mortgage rates have doubled, and the economy is coming out of a supercharged market,” Miller said. “What the Fed has been trying to do is beat the economy with a baseball bat until things break.”
Though new listings were up in April compared to March, overall inventory — the number of homes on the market — remains historically low, leading to fewer contract signings on the East End compared to both March of this year and April of last year.
In the Hamptons, signed contracts dropped 15 percent compared to March, declining for the first time in four months. New listings increased for the third time in four months, up 3 percent from March.
In the North Fork, signed contracts dipped 7 percent from March, slowing for the first time in three months. New listings rose for the fourth consecutive month, up from March by 2 percent.
Both contract signings and new listings on the East End were down significantly from April 2022, when the area was still experiencing a substantial influx of buyers before rising interest rates crashed the party.
New contract signings in the Hamptons declined by 20 percent year-over-year last month, from 91 to 73. New listings dropped from 127 to 92 over the same period, a 28 percent annual decrease.
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In the North Fork, new contract signings decreased 38 percent year-over-year, from 42 to 26. But new listings dipped only slightly, from 46 last April to 44 this year.
“We’re still comparing against a rocket ship,” Miller said of the heady days of early 2022. “We’ve got maybe a couple more months of this, and then the year over year is not going to be as skewed.”