In the New York Times today: Catskills vacation home prices are dropping.
Although sellers have not all lowered their list prices to meet buyers’ expectations, brokers estimate that the price for the typical weekend retreat has dropped at least 20 percent since its peak in 2007. That has lured some city dwellers to take the plunge on a getaway home, even as economic worries, snowstorms and tighter lending standards provided a chilling backdrop for the real estate market this winter.
Even in overheated Ulster County vacation-home strongholds like Woodstock, the article says, things are cooling off a little.
“The $300,000 to $500,000 price range, which is the bulk of our dual-residence market, is very, very quiet,” [Harris] Safier said, adding that buyers are looking more in the $250,000 to $300,000 range now.
While 20 percent is a very real loss of value, it's not Vegas either. Once again, it seems that both boom-time prosperity and catastrophic crashes have passed us by. From the New York Federal Reserve Bank, here's a recent report that claims upstate New York's housing markets (in metropolitan areas, anyway) were insulated from much of the tumult of the last few years.
