By DAVID SHEINGOLD
Home values keep rising across large swaths of northeastern Westchester County as the region continues to benefit from a decade-long housing market boom that has touched virtually every neighborhood in the area, much as it has throughout the United States.
From Goldens Bridge and Cross River to the priciest country lanes of Bedford, home prices went up last year in a majority of locations throughout The Recorder coverage area, increasing as much as 20 percent.
An analysis of sales data by The Recorder revealed that from 2022 to 2023, median home values climbed in four of the six areas with enough sales to review in Bedford, Lewisboro and Pound Ridge. The increases ranged from 2 percent in Katona, and an area covered by Goldens Bridge and Cross River, to 20 percent in the southeastern section of Bedford.
Medians ticked downward only in Pound Ridge, by almost 3 percent, and in a combined area of Bedford Corners and Bedford Village, by 7 percent.
For this analysis, Waccabuc was combined with South Salem, Cross River with Goldens Bridge and Bedford Corners with Bedford Village; that was done because some areas had too few sales to generate valid medians. Bedford Corners shares a zip code with a portion of the Village of Mount Kisco.
Data from 2024 also remains too limited to draw conclusions about the path of prices this year.
Over the two-year period from 2021 to 2023, typical values were up everywhere in the three towns except the combined Bedford Corners-Bedford Village area in the western section of Bedford.
Last year’s trends contrasted somewhat with a more mixed pattern in nearby communities. Those included Armonk and Chappaqua, where values commonly dipped last year; and North Salem and the rest of Mount Kisco, where values rose by double-digits.
Market gains cool
The increases last year were relatively tame compared to earlier years in the past decade, especially during the pandemic. That reflected national trends showing price spikes moderating throughout much of the U.S.
Still, median values continued rising across a large portion of the region.
Leading the way was the10506 zip code in southeastern Bedford. There, the median price rose 19.8 percent in 2023, to $1.24 million.
The next largest gain came in the Waccabuc-South Salem area, where the typical price went up 6.8 percent to $830,000.
The only declines from 2022 to 2023 showed up in Pound Ridge, which saw the median dip 2.7 percent, to $1.17 million, and the combined Bedford Corners-Bedford Village area, which absorbed a 6.6 percent decline, to $682,000.
Despite the dropoff, Pound Ridge’s typical value remained up almost 14 percent from 2021 to 2023. Waccabuc-South Salem’s was up 10 percent over that period.
The only two-year decline across the three towns came in the combined Bedford Corners-Bedford Village area. The $682,000 median in that area stood 9 percent below the level from 2021.
How this analysis was conducted
The analysis for this article is based on home-sales data maintained by the New York State Office of Real Property Services. Transactions were included if they met the following criteria: sales of occupied residential property with prices at least $200,000, listed as “arm’s-length” transactions representing the true market value of a home. Arm’s-length transactions exclude situations such as sales of damaged property, sales between relatives, deed transfers to simply change the name of an owner or sales that are part of larger transactions.