Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Home sales only heat up for some in First State

Delaware Public Media

Home sales are on the rise in New Castle and Kent counties, buoyed by entry-level buyers and empty nesters who are snapping up one-story properties.

Meanwhile, the Sussex County market experienced a rare lull in the first quarter. And across the board, homes in the $500,000-plus range are finding fewer takers.

Catherine Cambridge and her husband recently agreed to pay $370,000--$5,000 above list price—for a three-bedroom, circa 1960 rancher on a half-acre lot in the North Wilmington community of Windsor Hills. They were attracted to the home’s move-in condition, sumptuous master suite and family room addition.

At around 2,500 square feet, the home is about the same size as their current residence, a townhouse in Wilmington. The difference is the square footage is all on one floor.

“We had a hard time finding something that was all on one level,” she says. “We don’t need it right now—but we didn’t want to wait until we do need it.”

Stephen Mottola, who leads The Mottola Group at Long & Foster, says ranchers are popular with empty nesters and the over-50 set. Especially hot neighborhoods are: Brandywood, Foulk Woods, Sharpley, Woodbrook, Welshire, and Shipley Heights, with homes priced from the high-$280,000s to $400,000.

“Most have hardwood floors, garages and yards that are easy to maintain,” he says.

Low interest rates are another incentive.

“You can lock in a 15-year mortgage at around 2.8 percent and a 30-year mortgage at 3.4 percent, although you need to have very good credit to get it,” Mottola says. “There’s also an incentive because interest rates traditionally rise in presidential election years.”

Empty nesters aren’t the only buyers who are willing to make do with less space. He points to two recent sales in Middletown in the mid-$300,000 range, where families moved from large custom homes into smaller houses with the same price tag, one in Wilmington and one in North Wilmington.

“They have kids at Salesianum and Ursuline in Wilmington and had been spending two to three hours in the car every day taxiing their children,” Mottola says. “They are trading house size and bells and whistles for the conveniences of the city.”

In New Castle County, the volume of home sales spiked 9.4 percent in the first quarter, compared to the same period in 2015, according to Multiple Listing Service Reports from Patterson-Schwartz. The median home price increased from $204,500 to $207,500, a gain of 1.5 percent.

The biggest surprise was in neighboring Cecil County, Maryland, where unemployment has been a persistent concern. Home sales in Cecil leapt 23.3 percent compared to a year ago. Prices rose only slightly, edging up 2.8 percent, from $180,000 to $185,000.

Kent County saw a nearly 5 percent increase in home sales compared to the first quarter of 2015. Median sales prices were up – sitting at 188,700 to $193,000, a gain of 2.3 percent.

Sales in Sussex County took a rare dip, declining 0.7 percent.

George Thomasson blames the miserable weather.

“When people come to a resort area, they want a nice day for home shopping,” says Thomasson, associate broker at Gallo’s Berkshire Hathaway Home Services in Lewes. “As soon as the weather breaks the buyers start coming.”

He notes that more buyers are making discretionary purchases of second homes in coastal communities, compared to Kent and New Castle County, where most property shoppers are looking for primary homes.

“In our area, it’s 50-50, between a must-buy, primary home and a second home,” he says. “There isn’t always that urgency to buy.”

Thomasson says sales in the $300,000-$600,000 range are steady, while the $1 million-plus market is soft. There’s also a wild card in the mix: Will jitters over the Dow-DuPont merger trickle down into sales of second homes?

“We will have to wait and see how that plays out,” he says.

In Kent County, the home market enjoyed the hottest April in years, says Ed Hammond, a ReMAX broker in Dover.

“There’s stability in prices, plus inventory has been pretty thin. So there’s a little more demand than supply,” he says. “Last year was our best year in 25 years--and this year we are ahead of last year in the number of closings.”

In April, there were 523 home sales in Kent County, compared to 499 for that month in 2015 and 422 in 2014. The biggest demand is for single-family homes, compared to townhouses.

After years in the doldrums, there’s also an uptick in new construction.

“Several developments in the Magnolia area are very active, and Smyrna to a certain degree,” he says.

Still, tight credit and other factors are preventing a number of sales from going through.

“We are seeing homes under contract that don’t go to settlement, either because of financing or because the home inspection revealed something,” Hammond says. “We also are still being impacted by short sales, with many of these houses standing vacant for two to five years.”

In recent years, the upper end in Kent County was buoyed by an influx of buyers from New Jersey seeking relief from high property taxes. But the stream from the Garden State is now a trickle.

“Above $400,000 is definitely slow, mostly because that influx of out-of-state buyers has slowed,” he says. “State government and Dover Air Base are stable but Playtex and Kraft Foods have not been expanding. We’re not seeing an influx of upper management people.”

Statewide, the upper end remains becalmed. Among the $600,000 and up listings on the market:

  • A three-story Second Empire home, located on an oversize lot next door to the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, retains its 1866 fireplaces, high ceilings and elegant millwork. The kitchen and bathrooms, including a spa-like master bath, have been updated. Listed for: $1.24 million.
  • A 5,725-square-foot custom home in Middletown boasts a foyer with marble floors, a library with a Bose sound system and a kitchen with more than $125,000 in upgrades. Priced at: $699,000.
  • In Dover, a Tudor-style house with water views, formal gardens, circular ground staircase and a $1.3 million price tag has been sitting on the market for 3,113 days. (That’s eight years, six months and seven days.)
  • An eco-friendly custom home in the Lewes community of Wolf Pointe is outfitted with geothermal heating and cooling and back-up generator, as well as such indulgences as a screened-in lanai. Listed for: $769,000.

“We are seeing homes that had been priced in the $900,000s in the Route 52 corridor dip into the high $600,000s,” Mottola says. “It’s a very challenging segment of the market.”

Eileen Smith Dallabrida has written for Delaware Public Media since 2010. She's also written for USA Today, National Geographic Traveler, the Christian Science Monitor and many other news outlets.
Related Content