MID-HUDSON – Home sales declined year over year in the first quarter in the four-county region represented by the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors.
Sales dropped in Rockland, Orange and Westchester counties while they increased in Putnam County.
Sales in Putnam rose by 7.2 percent while they plummeted by 13.7 percent in Rockland and dropped by 2.3 percent in Westchester and by 1.4 percent in Orange County.
The association said first quarter sales for the region were largely the result of transactions that were negotiated in the last quarter of 2017, a period of uncertainty given that the federal tax reform bill was being negotiated in Congress with no clear picture as to how it would affect real estate. The association said that uncertainty could be a contributing factor, along with low inventory, to the flat sales numbers in most of the region in the first quarter.
The realtors’ group also said another “possible dark cloud on the horizon” is the increasingly volatile stock market.
But the association said mortgage rates remain “attractive,” unemployment is low and economic development activity in the region is high, resulting in “the prospects for another healthy year for real estate sales in the region.”
