Taken from The New York State Realtor, July/August 2008. "...Real estate is local and New York remains a great place to buy and sell a home. Unfortunately, the media has tried to paint all housing markets with the same brush and consumers are bombarded by negative housing market stories. Much of the national media focus has been on troubled markets in other parts of the country, which consumers naturally assume is an accurate accounting of the conditions in their own markets. New York's economy and housing market are not comparable to California, Florida or Michigan, which dominate the headlines. We do not rely on a single industry to drive our economy such as Michigan and our prices did not rise astronomically during the boom as they did in California and Florida.
We are currently working through a price correction, but sellers who have held the property for several years will still have the benefit of price appreciation. Despite what the media would have you believe, the majority of today's sellers have not lost their nest egg." (Written by Linda J. Page, President of New York State Association of Realtors)
As reported in The Citizen on Sunday, February 17,2008: "Slow to rise, slow to fall County market slumps, but it could be worse It is no secret that the U.S. housing market has slowed over the last two years. In some parts of the country, it is jammed up worse than a Los Angles freeway on a Friday afternoon.
New York state has felt the affects of the lurching real estate market, and sales have slowed in most counties since 2005. That includes Cayuga County, where recently released statistics from the state Realtors association show that single-family home sales have been on the decline for the past two years.
Yet, those numbers have not fallen at the same rates as those seen by some of the hardest-hit regions in the state and across the country. And despite the drop in sales, housing prices in the county are up since 2005.
Talk to many real estate agents in the area, and you will get a similar response-things are slow, but they could be worse.
"We don't take the big hit when the rest of the market takes a big hit," said James Driscoll, owner of Sherlock Homes Realtors.
Driscoll, who is also president of the local Realtors association, said that Cayuga County has never exactly followed the real estate market trends across the U.S. Because it is a smaller isolated market, this region did not experience the housing explosion in the first half of the decade.
"The county remains fairly steady,: Driscoll said. "We've been slow to grow over the last 10 years as far as the industry goes."
It is possible to do a Property Search within the site. Our office belongs to three MLS Systems, Ithaca/Tompkins County, Cortland and Cayuga/Greater Syracuse area.