Hudson Valley Open Houses

From the Journal News:

Mixed response at open houses
By JERRY GLEESON

While rising interest rates are slowing sales of homes in the Lower Hudson Valley, a sampling of open houses over the weekend shows how hard it is to generalize about buyer interest.

Three brokers met with decidedly mixed success when they opened the doors to potential homehunters Sunday afternoon in Yorktown, Greenburgh and Nanuet. The brokers agreed on one reality — they expect to work harder, and on more weekends, to move their clients' property this year.

All three houses had had their prices lowered in recent months. Real estate statistics portray a market in which buyers have more listings to pick from than a year ago and are taking more time to decide.

In Rockland, the inventory of single-family houses rose by 57.2 percent at the end of the second quarter, to 1,607, the Greater Hudson Valley Multiple Listing Service said yesterday. Sales were flat year over year.

Second-quarter numbers for Westchester and Putnam counties are expected later this month. First-quarter sales of single-family houses in Westchester dropped 14 percent year over year, while inventory rose nearly 34 percent. In Putnam, sales were down 9.6 percent and inventory was up nearly 24 percent.

"It's been a very long time since it's been this quiet," said Andrea O'Brien, an associate broker at Prudential Rand Realty, outside a split-level she was selling on South Deerfield Avenue in Yorktown. Just one couple had stopped by in the first hour of the open house, although four others dropped in during the two hours that followed.
...
People are popping in and out of the four-bedroom house being offered for $499,000, and Jeffrey expects to stick around a half-hour longer than he planned this day. The house has been on the market for seven months; Jeffrey is the second broker to handle it, and one of the first things he did was encourage the seller to lower the price from $549,000.
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Wesel Drive in Nanuet, broker James J. Dunphy has spent most of the afternoon watching the World Cup on the living room television at the four-bedroom house. It's only in the last half-hour that two prospects drop in, a couple and, shortly afterward, a pregnant woman looking by herself.
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The house has been on the market since May 24, and the price has been lowered from $529,900 to $519,000.

"Are you negotiable?" the woman, Christina Roche, asked. "Yes," Dunphy responded.