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Last week, I published a market report for Ossining which had the median price of a single family home in Ossining schools at $382,000. While Westchester is one of the more expensive counties in our state, Ossining is actually one of the more affordable places to buy from a price point of view.
Today, Coldwell Banker has published a Home Listing Report which surveys 164 New York housing markets and has ranked Ossining (!) as the most expensive market in our state with an average price of almost $920,000. Being a native of Ossining and with an office in town, I was intrigued as to how they came to that conclusion, so I dug a little deeper.
There were quite a few characteristics of the data to consider to put the numbers in context:
- The span of time measured was listings taken was from September, 2010 to March 2011.
- The only property type surveyed was 4 bedroom, 2 bath single family homes.
- The only homes surveyed were homes listed with Coldwell Banker themselves.
- The prices measured were asking prices, not sale prices.
Those are quite a few filters- we are now talking about a specific firm in a specific area on a specific property type during a specific period.
When the data is narrowed this way it is entirely possible for a statistical anomaly to appear in at least a few of the 164 markets surveyed. I believe that this is the case with Ossining. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be roll out of bed every morning in a house worth $919,986. I really would. But I don’t think that will happen until about 2025.
To their credit, Coldwell Banker has stated very clearly on their press release what the parameters were on their survey. I would expect that when you report on 2300 markets nationwide that having all of them reflect true market value across the board for all activity is impossible. From my vantage as a broker, it simply means that between September 2010 and March 2011 Coldwell Banker put some very nice listings on in Ossining. Salud. I hope to sell a few of them myself.
