Short Sales: Dodging The Inevitable

The ever-increasing number of short sales on Long Island doesn't really surprise me anymore. In fact, nothing really does. With major banks like Citi trading at under $5.00 (as of this day) and as low as .97 in the last 3 months, what's there to be surprised about?

Well, in order to achieve some shock value (because that's what good writing is all about), I'm going to focus on what we know about the local Long Island real estate market and how short sales are shaping up to be a great challenge. Below is a chart of short sales on Long Island. The chart is split into each respective zone, showing how many short sales there are as of April, 2009 (note: this is all from the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island - if a short sale is marked, as it should be with a Y for Yes in the listing, that's what these numbers represent. What these numbers may not represent is real estate agents who don't know their listing is a short sale or they don't correctly upload the listing and check of Y for short sale). Another words, figure these numbers are larger.

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If you do not know which zone your town is located, feel free to call me at 631.587.1700, ext. 51.

What we see in this chart is clear, with over 3700 short sales on Long Island and only 262 sales in the previous 90 days (that's only 87 short sales sold per month), sales are lagging. So I'll use the stats from this chart and divide the short sales available with the short sales sold over a time period of 90 days, and the scary thing is, there is over a 43 month supply of short sales on Long Island.

That means, at the current rate of sales, it would take...

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