Every market has a tell for who holds the leverage. In housing, it is months of supply: how long it would take to sell every home on the market at the current sales pace. Below 6 months, sellers call the shots. Above 6 months, buyers do. Around 6 months, it is a fair fight.
For Staten Island buyers, that number has not favored them borough-wide in a long time. The last time it truly did was 2008 to 2012.
What a buyer’s market actually looked like
After the Great Recession and the subprime collapse, Staten Island checked every box of a classic buyer's market:
Supply: SIBOR reported 13.3 months of inventory in summer 2012, far past the 6-month threshold.
Choice: more than 2,000 to 2,500 homes actively for sale across the borough at a time.
Time: listings taking approaching 200 days to go into contract, per SIBOR.
Concessions: foreclosures and short sales dragging prices down, with sellers cutting deeply to get a deal done.
Buyers in that window had time, options, and negotiating power — the opposite of the last few years.
The near-miss: 2018–2019
Staten Island almost got there again right before the pandemic. In 2019, active listings pushed past 2,200, sellers were accepting around 96% of list price on average — a 4% haircut as a matter of routine — and months of supply spiked to 7.46 in March 2019, briefly past the line — but the borough never settled there.
Then the line moved the other way, and it has not come back.
The two forces that killed the buyer’s market
First, the 2020 migration. When the pandemic hit, buyers poured out of Brooklyn and Manhattan hunting for detached single-family homes with yards. Staten Island was the obvious destination, and demand spiked.
Second, the rate lock. The buyers of 2020 and 2021 locked in ultralow mortgage rates, and they are not giving them up. When rates climbed in 2022 and 2023, the expected flood of listings never arrived. Instead, active inventory fell to roughly 750 to 900 homes. Owners with cheap mortgages simply stayed put, and supply stayed scarce.
That is why, even with higher rates and affordability stretched thin, Staten Island never flipped back to a buyer's market. The inventory was never there to flip with.
Where buyer leverage still exists: co-ops and older condos
There is one corner of the market where buyers still have room. Co-ops and older condo units on Staten Island regularly stretch past 6 months of supply, sometimes beyond 12 months. Steep HOA fees, tougher financing, and softer demand than fee-simple houses all work in a buyer's favor there.
For an investor or a buyer willing to look at those segments, the negotiation is a different conversation than it is for a single-family home — and the discount expectations should be, too.
What to watch for a real shift
A true buyer's market returns when the numbers say so, not when headlines do. Watch three things: months of supply crossing 6 borough-wide, active listings climbing back over 2,000, and sold-to-list ratios sliding under 97%. Until those move together, buyers are negotiating in a seller's market — except in the condo and co-op corners where the leverage already flipped.
Nicandri Estevez is a licensed NY real estate agent and licensed NJ home improvement contractor. Looking to buy on Staten Island? Call (917) 335-7258.