A year ago this week, a house on Benedict Road in Todt Hill closed for $8.5 million. It nearly doubled the previous borough record of $4.6 million, and it did so while other listings across the borough sat for three months or longer. Same borough, same headline shortage, two completely different markets.
That gap is the story most people miss when they read that Staten Island inventory is down 26 to 29 percent from balanced norms. The shortage is real. What it does to your listing or your offer depends entirely on which few blocks you're standing on.
The number that doesn't add up the way it should
Look at the borough's second-quarter 2026 figures and something odd shows up. The median sale price was $742,000, up 1.7 percent year over year, and price per square foot climbed 6.8 percent to $495. Normal enough for a market people describe as tight. But the transaction count told a different story: only 660 closings in Q2 2026, a drop of 22.2 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. June alone saw 221 deals, down nearly 29 percent year over year, even as price per square foot rose 4.6 percent.
Usually, when the number of sales falls that sharply, it signals cooling demand and softer prices. Here it's the opposite. Fewer people are transacting, and the ones who do are paying more per square foot for what little is available. That's not a demand story. It's a supply story, and it points straight at why so few Staten Island owners are listing in the first place.
Why owners are staying put
Most Staten Island homeowners with a mortgage bought or refinanced between 2020 and early 2022, when 30-year fixed rates sat below 5 percent, and often below 3. New originations in 2026 have stayed in the low-to-mid 6 percent range for most of the spring and summer, with Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey putting the average 30-year fixed at 6.19 percent in April, 6.52 percent in May, and still near 6.5 percent by early July. Industry estimates put roughly 78 percent of Staten Island mortgage holders on rates below 5 percent.
Trading a 3 percent rate for a 6.5 percent one on the same loan balance adds real money to a monthly payment, and that math is enough to keep a lot of otherwise-willing sellers on the sidelines. Fewer listings hit the market. The ones that do get bid up, because buyers still need somewhere to live. That's the mechanism behind the price-per-square-foot number climbing while the deal count falls. It isn't more buyers chasing the same houses. It's the same buyers chasing fewer of them.
Staten Island's own board of realtors flagged this pattern directly in its spring reporting. As the board's CEO put it in a May release covering new listings, pending sales, and tightening inventory:
"Sustained demand combined with limited inventory continues to define Staten Island's housing market."
The part that release didn't spell out is that the effect is nowhere near uniform once you leave the borough-wide average and look block by block.
Same shortage, four different markets
| Area | Typical time to contract | What the price data shows | What's driving it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Great Kills | About 25 days | Sale-to-list ratio of 101 to 103 percent, median near $760,000 | Active teardown and expansion permits on streets like Hillside Terrace, Tennyson Drive, and Armstrong Avenue are compressing an already thin supply of move-in-ready homes |
| Annadale, Tottenville, Prince's Bay | Under 50 days when priced and staged well | Annadale led the borough in May 2026 with 5.1 percent year-over-year growth to a roughly $945,000 single-family median; Tottenville followed at 4.5 percent | Family buyers competing for a shrinking pool of detached, single-family South Shore stock |
| St. George, new-construction condos | Clears quickly | Median in the $449,500 to $479,500 range as of June 2026 | New condo product like Lighthouse Point near the ferry terminal, part of a North Shore pipeline aiming for roughly 2,400 new homes, is absorbing buyers priced out of the South Shore |
| New Brighton, parts of Stapleton, and Mariners Harbor, older or higher-end stock | 80 to 110-plus days | Price growth muted on pre-2000 inventory | Dated systems and layouts ask buyers to compromise on condition even when they have few other options |
Four pockets, the same borough-wide shortage, and four almost unrelated experiences of what that shortage feels like from inside a transaction. Stapleton alone shows up on both ends of that split. Its new condo product clears fast while its older, higher-end resale stock can sit for months, which is as good a one-neighborhood proof of the pattern as the borough offers.
What this means if you're listing a Staten Island home
A South Shore colonial in move-in condition is competing in a genuinely tight market where over-asking offers are close to normal below $800,000. A 1970s split-level on the North Shore with an original kitchen is competing against buyers who can choose a brand-new condo at Lighthouse Point instead, at a lower price point and with a builder warranty. Pricing either one off the borough median instead of its own comp set is how a listing ends up sitting for 90 days wondering why the "shortage" didn't do its job.
Condition matters more here than the headline numbers suggest. The Great Kills pattern, where renovation and teardown permits are reshaping entire blocks, is a preview of what buyers now expect walking into a showing anywhere on the South Shore. Staging and updated systems aren't cosmetic extras in this market. They're the difference between a 25-day close and a 100-day one.
What this means if you're buying on Staten Island
Waiting for mortgage rates to drop is a reasonable instinct, but it's worth being specific about what a rate drop would actually change. A meaningful rate decrease would likely unlock more of the sub-5-percent owners currently sitting out, which means more competing sellers, not necessarily softer prices. On a $750,000 purchase, industry estimates put the annual cost of waiting closer to $25,000 to $30,000 in price appreciation, which tends to outweigh what a half-point rate drop saves on a monthly payment.
If South Shore detached homes are the target, expect the shortage to bite hardest there, since zoning across most of Staten Island restricts new construction to single-family lots and land for larger new builds is limited. If flexibility on property type is on the table, the North Shore condo pipeline is where more inventory is actually arriving, both from the North Shore Action Plan and from the roughly 2,100-unit Stapleton Homeport project on the former naval base site.
For buyers using a VA loan, the 2026 loan limit for Richmond County is $1,089,300, which covers even the higher end of South Shore single-family pricing at zero down. It's a detail worth knowing before assuming a stretch purchase is out of reach.
Property taxes are also part of the real math here. Staten Island's effective rate runs roughly 1.0 to 1.4 percent of assessed value, and most owner-occupied one-to-three family homes are assessed under the city's Class 1 cap, which limits annual increases to 6 percent and five-year increases to 20 percent. On a $740,000 home, that typically lands in the $7,400 to $10,360 range annually before exemptions.
A few questions worth asking before you list or make an offer
Does a housing shortage mean any Staten Island listing will draw multiple offers? No. It means well-priced, well-maintained homes in in-demand pockets like the South Shore draw multiple offers. Dated inventory on the North Shore can still sit for three months or more in the same market.
Should I wait for mortgage rates to drop before buying? The math generally favors buying sooner. A rate drop tends to bring more locked-in sellers off the sidelines, which adds competition, while price appreciation in the meantime has historically outpaced what a small rate decrease saves monthly.
Is Staten Island actually more affordable than Brooklyn or Manhattan? On a price basis, yes. Staten Island's Q2 2026 median of $742,000 compares to a citywide median around $1.2 million over the same period, and Brooklyn's borough-wide median has run well above Staten Island's for most of 2026. The affordability gap is real, even as specific Staten Island neighborhoods tighten up.
If you're trying to figure out which side of this shortage your street or your target neighborhood falls on, that's a conversation worth having before you set a price or a budget. Gina D'Onofrio has spent three decades working Staten Island and New Jersey transactions block by block, not just borough-wide, and can walk you through what your specific comp set is actually doing right now. Let's Connect.
