$1M home sales surge across Greater Rochester market

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There’s a time-worn adage in real estate that says you never want to buy the most expensive house on the block.

“I was reminded of that the other day by a prospective buyer,” said Trip Pierson, owner/broker at Mitchell Pierson Jr. Inc. Realtors of Pittsford. “To which I said, ‘How many times have you seen that house vacant?’ ”

The answer, of course: Not often, especially in the most exclusive neighborhoods and certainly not now.

The sale of million-dollar homes in Greater Rochester have soared over the past year, defying the national trend regarding luxury-home transactions while also presenting buyers with the same bidding wars that have been the norm at more moderate price ranges.

Between July 25, 2024, and July 25 of this year, 86 homes priced at $1 million or above sold in the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Wayne, Livingston and Yates. In that same period between 2023 and 2024, there were 64 sales above $1 million.

The spike isn’t because of lakeside mansions, either. The change in ownership of waterfront properties in those five counties was basically flat; 36 this year compared to 35 the previous year. But the sale non-waterfront homes skyrocketed by 72.4 percent (50 compared to 29).

“That’s a huge, huge, huge difference,” said Don Simonetti Jr., president of the Greater Rochester Association of Realtors and manager/broker at the Victor office of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services. “It shows the market is very, very robust and that there’s money out there.”

It’s not generally what’s happening across the country, however. After a double-digit spike nationally in the first quarter, the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing noted a year-over-year decline of 2.9 percent in May, followed by a jump of 11 percent in June.

So why the rise locally in big-dollar home sales?

Part of it, Pierson said, could be that buyers are experiencing the same anxiety that house hunters at lesser price points are feeling.

“Because there are so few homes listed, and because of the competition, they’re saying, ‘I either buy this house or I might be waiting for a long time,’ ” Pierson said.

Indeed, it’s very much a seller’s market, whether the home is listed for $389,000 or $1.1 million. Of the homes that sold for over $1 million in the past year, the median selling price was 15 percent above list, according to GRAR statistics.

“That tells me the market is really good,” Simonetti said.

Pierson listed a home on Hickory Lane in Honeoye Falls on July 25 for $1.25 million, and delayed offers until noon on July 29. There were multiple offers, and a winning bid well above list seems certain.

Closings have been heating up, too. Between May and July, there were 23 homes in Monroe County alone that sold for over $1 million (just three were waterfront properties).

Of those 23, 12 were located where you would expect, Pittsford, including the highest-price sale of $2.5 million on Abbey Lane. Five of the $1 million-plus home sales were in Brighton. One, though, was tucked away on the county’s west side in Parma.

“There’s a lot of beautiful homes built on the countryside with acreage, and people with money like their privacy,” said Craig Foreman, a luxury home specialist in Howard Hanna’s Chili-Ogden office.

Today’s work-from-home arrangements also may play a part to the surge.

“Since COIVD, as more people work remotely, they have their office at home and they have a sense of ‘This is the place I can be with the people I want to be with,’ so they’re spending more,” Pierson said.

And then there is simply the standard operating procedure of the residential real estate market. Sellers of homes in the price range just below are moving up.

“I would say that more than 90 percent of the local money that’s coming in on the $1 million level is coming from the $750,000 level,” Simonetti said.

In Monroe County, between July 25, 2024 and July 25 of this year, 120 homes sold between $750,000 and $999,999. That was up 39.5 percent from 86 closed sales the previous year.

“So, it doesn’t surprise me that the over $1 million level is experience an increase in growth as well,” Simonetti said.

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