Everyone has a theory about what the pandemic did to this market. This is what the recorded sales say — a decade of single-family prices in each county, and the transaction counts from the county clerk that show the split happening a year before prices did.
The familiar version is that the pandemic emptied the city into the suburbs. The recorded sales tell a more specific story, and the timing is not what the shorthand suggests.
Through 2019, Queens was growing fastest, not the suburbs. Between 2015 and 2019 the median Queens single-family sale rose 31.9%, against Nassau 21.4% and Suffolk 20.3%.
By 2025 the order had reversed. Measured from 2015, single-family prices are up Suffolk 102.8% · Nassau 84.9% · Queens 75.5%. Suffolk did not lead this comparison in a single year before the pandemic; it has led every year since 2022.
Each county indexed to its own 2015 median, so the lines compare growth rather than price level — a Queens house and a Suffolk house cost different amounts, which tells you nothing about which market moved more.
| Year | Nassau | Suffolk | Queens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $449K (100.0) | $345K (100.0) | $493K (100.0) |
| 2016 | $475K (105.8) | $348K (100.9) | $565K (114.7) |
| 2017 | $505K (112.5) | $368K (106.5) | $605K (122.8) |
| 2018 | $535K (119.2) | $395K (114.5) | $650K (131.9) |
| 2019 | $545K (121.4) | $415K (120.3) | $650K (131.9) |
| 2020 | $588K (130.8) | $460K (133.3) | $695K (141.0) |
| 2021 | $662K (147.4) | $530K (153.6) | $762K (154.7) |
| 2022 | $700K (155.9) | $565K (163.8) | $805K (163.4) |
| 2023 | $715K (159.2) | $590K (171.0) | $780K (158.3) |
| 2024 | $785K (174.8) | $650K (188.4) | $824K (167.3) |
| 2025 | $830K (184.9) | $700K (202.8) | $865K (175.5) |
Median closed single-family sale price, with the index against 2015 in brackets. Single-family only: Queens is co-op dense and Suffolk is not, so an all-types median would compare different kinds of home. The current year is incomplete and is left out.
Price is only half of it. This is the count of recorded sales each year, taken from the county clerk rather than the MLS, and indexed to each area’s own 2017 level.
| Year | Brooklyn | Nassau County | Queens | Suffolk County |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| 2018 | 92.4 | 100.9 | 94.0 | 101.2 |
| 2019 | 88.5 | 100.8 | 88.3 | 101.0 |
| 2020 | 71.2 | 91.6 | 68.7 | 97.4 |
| 2021 | 119.8 | 111.2 | 101.9 | 109.5 |
| 2022 | 108.7 | 94.3 | 97.4 | 92.3 |
| 2023 | 77.3 | 74.4 | 76.2 | 72.7 |
| 2024 | 78.6 | 70.0 | 78.1 | 73.5 |
| 2025 | 82.8 | 67.2 | 81.1 | 67.2 |
2020 is where the two regions separate, and it shows up in volume before it shows up in price. Through the shutdown year Long Island kept transacting at about 95% of its 2017 pace while the boroughs fell to roughly 70%.
And this is the part that rarely gets said: Long Island bought its price growth with liquidity. In 2025 Nassau and Suffolk recorded about 67% of their 2017 sale count, against roughly 82% in Queens and Brooklyn. Fewer homes are trading out here, and the ones that do trade cost considerably more than they did.
Those two facts are the same fact. Scarcity is not a side effect of the price growth out here — it is the reason for it. When fewer homes come to market, the ones that do meet more buyers each, and that is what carries a price. The test is what happened to prices while volume fell: if buyers had simply gone away, Long Island prices would have gone down with the sale count. They did the opposite, and by a wider margin than either borough.
For an owner deciding whether to sell, that is the more useful way to read it. A thin market is not a weak one. It means less competition from other sellers than at almost any point in the last decade — though it cuts both ways, because the same scarcity applies to whatever you buy next.
Recorded transfers with a stated price above $50,000, from the county clerk. Each area is measured against its own 2017 level and never against another area’s: how completely a sale is categorised varies by county, so comparing raw counts between them would measure record-keeping rather than the market. The clerk record is used here in preference to the MLS because it has no gap in 2021.
Which side of this are you on? A decade of divergence means the right move depends heavily on which county you are selling in and which you are buying into — the two markets have not behaved the same way since 2019.
Not in the latest data. Comparing June through August 2026 with June through August 2025 (the same 3 months a year apart), the median sale price of all homes sold: Nassau's has risen about 4%, to about $860K; Suffolk's has risen about 5%, to about $715K. This describes the direction so far, not a forecast, and it differs by town, property type and price band; each county's market report shows the supply and pace behind it.
On home prices, Suffolk is the less expensive county. Over the 12 months from September 2025 to September 2026, the median sold price of a single-family house was about $715K in Suffolk against $858K in Nassau. Other medians over the same months: condos: $525K in Suffolk and $785K in Nassau; co-ops: $277K in Suffolk and $365K in Nassau. Homes of every type sold in 2025 carried a median annual property tax of about $11,200 in Suffolk and $13,800 in Nassau, which is 1.66% and 1.67% of the median sale price respectively. Sale prices and property taxes are only part of the cost of living; these figures do not cover commuting, insurance or other household costs, and both vary widely by town.
Suffolk. Measured on median closed single-family sales indexed to 2015, growth stands at Suffolk 102.8%, Nassau 84.9%, Queens 75.5%. Each county is measured against its own 2015 median, so this compares growth rather than price level.
Yes. Recorded sales in 2025 ran at about 67% of the 2017 level in Nassau and 67% in Suffolk, against roughly 81% in Queens. Fewer homes are changing hands here than a decade ago, even as prices have risen faster.
The record supports a movement, but not the timing people assume. Queens single-family prices grew faster than Nassau's or Suffolk's right up to 2019. What changed first in 2020 was transaction volume: Long Island kept selling through the shutdown year while the boroughs dropped sharply. Suffolk only overtook on price growth several years later.
Prices are medians of closed single-family sales recorded on OneKey MLS, 2015 through 2025. Single-family only, so the comparison is like for like across counties with very different co-op and condo shares. Each county is indexed to its own base year, which measures growth rather than price level.
Sale counts come from the county clerk’s recorded transfers, not the MLS. The MLS record for Nassau and Suffolk is materially incomplete for part of 2021 — a consequence of the merger that created the current MLS, not of the market — and 2021 was in fact a strong year here, so an MLS count would state the opposite of the truth. The clerk record has no such gap. Prices are unaffected: a median holds up when records are missing in a way a count does not.
Brooklyn appears in the sale counts but not the price series. OneKey holds only a few thousand Brooklyn sales across the whole period because Brooklyn trades chiefly on a different MLS, so a Brooklyn price median here would not describe that market. Its clerk record is complete, so the transaction count is sound.
Nothing here is modelled or forecast. Every figure is a count or a median of recorded sales.
Nassau market report → Suffolk market report → Queens market report → Nassau since 2013 → Suffolk since 2013 → Queens since 2013 →
Figures are county-wide medians drawn from live OneKey MLS data and refresh as new sales close; they describe the market, not any specific property, and are rounded to avoid false precision. Joseph DeVito is a NY Licensed Associate Real Estate Broker and an attorney; this analysis is general market information, not legal, tax, or individualized investment advice. Confirm school-district boundaries, tax figures, and comparable sales for any specific property before acting. Price figures are medians of closed single-family sales; sale counts are recorded transfers from the county clerk. The two are deliberately drawn from different sources and are described separately above.
Based on information from OneKey® MLS, for the period August 10, 2013 through October 3, 2026.
