Housing
A shortage of available housing is a concern expressed by many residents. There is a lack of both long-term rentals and affordable homes to purchase in Wilmington. A look at recent Wilmington real estate listings reveals that the average home price is $568,593 and the median price is $608,000. The average price for a building lot is $143,750 and the median is $132,500. Even though the building lots are more affordable, if the buyer cannot pay cash, loans to purchase vacant land are often more difficult to get than mortgages. They typically also require a larger down payment.
Essex County has lots of job openings in Elizabethtown. Many of them pay hourly wages. For example, a paralegal position pays $29.15/hour. Even assuming all leave is paid (so 52 paid weeks per year), the annual salary would be $53,000. When you look at various online mortgage calculators, a person making this income, and who could afford a down payment of $5,000 could afford a house that costs $89,000. A family with two incomes of $53,000 could afford $172,000. Both of these numbers assume an excellent credit rating.
Looking at a closer job commute, the Director of Golf at Craig Wood pays $45,000-$55,000. The Administrative Assistant to the Village of Lake Placid Chief of Police pays $52,000 - $58,000. It is clear that none of these jobs would provide the ability to purchase a house in Wilmington.
On January 1, 2025 Adirondack Roots, AdkAction, and LivingADK launched a program to convert short-term rentals to long-term rentals. This is an effort to increase affordable housing in the ADKs. The program is supported through $20,000 in grants from the Adirondack Foundation and the Hudson Headwaters Upstream Fund and also from "individual supporters." Preference will be given to landlords with rental units in Elizabethtown and surrounding towns, but the program may be expanded in the future.
The program will provide $2000 (one time only) to STR owners who convert their properties to long-term rentals. It will also provide educational resources and one-on-one support to help with the conversion to a long-term rental. Some STR owners find that operating an STR costs more in time, money, and energy than they expected. Benefits to STR owners include a steady and predictable source of income. Also, long-tern rentals can cost less to operate because renters pay the utilities.
We hope that this program will encourage some STR owners to convert their properties to rentals. However, a look at the numbers suggests that a one-time payment of $2,000 might not be sufficient incentive to get them to convert. A general rule of thumb is you should spend no more than 30% of your income on rent. For someone making $53,000, that would be $1,472 per month. For the long-term rental owner, this would bring in a yearly income of $17,664. The average price in Wilmington for an STR is $317 per night according to AirDNA. At $317 per night, an STR owner would only need to rent for 55 out of 365 nights per year to bring in the same income. If there were two family members, with combined earnings of $106,000, they could afford a higher rent-$2,650. That would earn the long-term rental owner $31,800 for the year. The STR owner would need to rent for at least 100 nights at $317 per night to make the same amount of money with the STR. This program might be more appealing to STR owners who charge less per night than the current Wilmington average, so would need to rent more frequently to match what they could earn from operating a long-term rental.
A link to the program can be found here.