Home sales on the East End have skyrocketed last year compared to 2012 and 2011, according to a report released Monday by Suffolk Research Service Inc.

The research service’s president, George Simpson, described the East End market as “booming.”

His numbers show Suffolk County’s five eastern towns have seen a 61 percent increase in sales since 2011, with the median price for single family houses on the East End rising by 4 percent from 2012 to 2013.

Looking at 2013’s fourth quarter numbers, which the service just released, 116 housing units were sold in Riverhead Town, compared with 74 in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 60 during the same period in 2011.

Southold Town saw 159 houses sold in the fourth quarter of 2013, compared with 86 during that same three-month stretch of 2012.

Marie Beninati, owner of Beninati Associates in Southold, said the trend of a dwindling housing stock and rising home prices has been going on for about “six months or so,” from her experience — and has been about a year and a half in the making.

“I haven’t really done the numbers, but if you sell two houses, maybe one comes on the market,” she said, adding that rising prices isn’t ideal, but it is a natural thing to see a pendulum swing toward more of a seller’s market.

According to a Long Island Decade Survey of Residential Sales report for 2013 compiled by The Douglas Elliman Report series, there were 12,801 homes for sale on Long Island in 2013 as opposed to 14,574 in 2012 — a decrease of 12.2 percent.

http://riverheadnewsreview.timesreview.com/2014/02/51132/report-east-end-real-estate-market-booming/