Home Prices Unchanged in Queens, Long Island as Loans Tighten

By Sharon L. Lynch

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Sales of homes in Long Island and Queens, New York, declined in the second quarter as mortgage companies tightened lending standards.

The number of sales fell 5.3 percent to 8,694 from a year earlier, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report today. The median price in Queens, a borough of New York City, and in Nassau County and parts of Suffolk County excluding the East End of Long Island rose 0.1 percent to $445,450. The number of sales in Queens alone fell almost 24 percent to 2,363.

``Financing plays a big part,'' Dottie Herman, chief executive officer of the brokerage, said in a telephone interview. ``It's going to affect your market and I think it is going to affect your younger buyers.''

Lenders are imposing higher borrowing standards and charging more for credit, creating a bigger hurdle for low-end buyers in the city's outer boroughs than for buyers in Long Island's wealthier suburbs, Herman said. About 60 percent of lenders made it more difficult for the most qualified applicants to secure financing in the first quarter, a Federal Reserve survey shows.

Today's Miller Samuel report is the latest indication the national housing slump has moved into the New York metropolitan area.

Nationally, sales of previously owned homes in the U.S. rose in May from a record low. Resales increased 2 percent to a 4.99 million annual rate, higher than forecast, from a 4.89 million pace in April, the National Association of Realtors said June 26.

Manhattan Apartments

Manhattan apartment sales in the three months ended in June dropped the most for a second quarter since 1998 and unsold inventory approached an eight-year record, New York-based Miller Samuel and Prudential said in a July 2 survey.

In Queens, which sits across the East River from Manhattan, the median price rose 0.2 percent to $470,000, the companies said today. In Nassau County, on western Long Island, the median remained exactly $485,000, and in the sections of Suffolk County surveyed it declined 0.6 percent to $396,550.

``I don't think there is any bloodbath,'' Herman said.

The number of sales in Nassau rose 5.3 percent to 2,875 homes. In Suffolk, the increase was 4.6 percent to 2,999 properties.

Luxury prices in the area, defined as the top 10 percent of sales, rose 7.4 percent to a median of $1.02 million, Miller Samuel said. The number of sales fell 11 percent for the sector.

Today's report does not include the beachside vacation haven of the Hamptons.

Second-quarter sales volume there dropped 29 percent and the median price fell 11 percent to $735,000 from a year earlier, Suffolk Research Service Inc., based in Hampton Bays, New York, said yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sharon L. Lynch in New York at sllynch@bloomberg.net