Luxury-home sales in the US are sinking as inflation, economic uncertainty and the stock-market slump push wealthy buyers to the sidelines. The biggest drop was on New York’s Long Island.
In the three months through April, sales of high-end homes in the US fell 17.8% from a year earlier, the biggest drop since the start of the coronavirus lockdowns, Redfin Corp. said Friday in a report that measured the top 5% of listings in each of 50 large metropolitan areas. Non-luxury transactions slipped just 5.4%, according to the brokerage.
Luxury deals fell the most in Long Island’s Nassau County, with a decline of 45.3% from a year earlier. The county is home to wealthy suburbs such as Old Westbury and Brookville that are about an hour’s drive to New York City.
The US housing market is cooling fast, but it’s not just first-time buyers who are pulling back as surging mortgage rates cut into their purchasing power. Buyers who could afford million-dollar homes a few months ago now have to look at cheaper options or put their searches on hold.
“The pool of people qualified to purchase luxury properties is shrinking because the stock market is falling and mortgage rates are rising,” said Elena Fleck, a Redfin real estate agent in West Palm Beach, Florida, the area with the fifth-biggest decline in high-end transactions. “The good news for buyers is the market is becoming more balanced and competition is easing up.”
