Red-Hot Properties

“With the credit crisis,” added Griffin, a 14-year veteran of the residential real estate trade in eastern Onondaga County, “you see a different kind of person looking. People who have the money are looking to stockpile something, even if they are not planning to use it right away. Real estate is considered a safer investment than some of the stocks. Some people were waiting for things to bottom out. Once everything shifted they realized that this was a good investment and it was time {to buy}.”

Most of the people looking to jump into the local market are considering higher end homes, over $500,000, and most of them are looking at these as second homes or vacation properties. “If you live in New York City and commute to a weekend home in the Hamptons,” said Griffin, “the thought of spending three to 3½ hours on the Long Island Expressway in traffic makes you think twice. They see the prices and the quality of life we have here. You can drive that same amount of time to our area with no traffic for a weekend getaway.

“It’s the quality of life that we sell as well as affordability,” she added. “A lot of kids who grew up here and moved to Boston or elsewhere now want their kids to enjoy the kind of lifestyle that they grew up with—the skiing, the swimming, the summers, the safety we enjoy.”

In Skaneateles, the story is the same, but price tags are a lot higher. “Our market was soft all year,” said Linda Roche of Linda Roche Realty USA. “A month ago it started to take off.” In the past few weeks, Roche has made deals on four waterfront properties over $1 million, and all of the buyers have been from outside the area. “This is unusual,” said Roche, well respected as a pioneer in marketing Finger Lakes real estate. “On the waterfront, we usually only get two or three sales a year.”

Is this likely to continue? “I’ll let you know in a week,” she replied. “I’ve been getting calls from Manhattan, Chicago, from California. People from different parts of the country who have been in Skaneateles as a child, maybe they lived here, maybe they vacationed here and remembered it, and they want to come back. I think a lot of people on the higher end have pulled their money out of the bank, where they weren’t earning interest. People with the wherewithal look at our prices, and they see this as a good investment. These are professionals in their 40s and 50s who have done very well financially. 

“They see this as a good time in the markets,” she continued, “and they have the money to buy, so they do. A lot of them have a couple of places, and their business takes them all over the world. They decide they want to raise their family here. Skaneateles was always expensive, but it doesn’t look expensive to areas of the country that are more expensive.”

But luxury waterfront homes aren’t for everyone; there is a middle class, after all. But those folks still need housing. “Younger, first-time buyers will continue to buy,” said Roche. “The person trading up, buying their second home is not buying right now. The lower-end market is doing well, because young people starting out have no fear. The in-between buyers are having a hard time. They have family, children, they worry about maybe losing their job. They’re being more conservative. But the first-time buyer is doing fine. The upper end is fine. In hard economic times people who already own a home don’t buy new houses. When you’re uncertain about a job, when you just don’t know what’s going to happen, you tend to stay where you are.”

So with the stock market tumbling and the credit markets creaking to a halt, how does someone manage to hang on to enough money to buy a luxury home? “The upper-end people knew this was coming,” said Roche. “They know.”

—Ed Griffin-Nolan