One house. Twenty sets of buyers. The lines outside open houses have been an in-your-face example of Long Island’s housing affordability challenges.
The imbalance between the number of houses available for sale and the demand for homes drove prices to record highs last year, and they’ve since cooled only slightly despite a doubling of interest rates.
There were fewer than 5,000 houses on the market across Long Island at the end of June. Over the past 35 years, there have been nearly four times that many available properties on average at that time of the year, according to OneKey MLS data. The lack of supply has pitted buyers against each other.
Delmy Flores, 31, knows firsthand how competitive homebuying can be on Long Island, particularly for first-timers like she and her husband Jerry, 33. The couple has been searching for a home in Suffolk County for about a year and a half. After making more than 20 offers, they might finally have found their next home, in Shirley.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Through scores of interviews with experts and Long Island families, Newsday’s “Feeling the Squeeze” series gives insight into why the region is so expensive and explains the financial toll that comes with living here. From struggles to afford child care, to the burdens of high housing costs and more, these stories impact Long Islanders of all backgrounds and walks of life.
The couple started looking in early 2022 when mortgage rates were around 3%, checking out 70 houses, sometimes five in a day. Flores, who grew up in Brentwood, said they focused their search in areas of Suffolk where homes and property taxes are more affordable, including Bellport, Mastic and Central Islip.
Those areas saw some of the highest rates of bidding wars in recent years.
The couple was looking for homes priced around $450,000 but found they needed to look well below that to have any chance at landing the deal.
Delmy Flores and her husband Jerry are planning to move into…
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