As a national real estate website proclaimed the Hartford area the hottest market in the nation for home sales in June, buyers continue to reach deeper into their mortgage credit or savings to get the keys, explains CT Insider.
Greater Hartford led Realtor.com’s monthly analysis for markets nationally, based on views for available listings and other metrics. New England and New York occupied 11 of the top 20 slots, including metropolitan Springfield, Massachusetts, ranked sixth, and the regions of New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford, and Norwich.
On Tuesday, a ranch on Skonet Road in West Hartford sold for $425,000, about $50,000 more than what its owners sought, with the sellers represented by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties brokers John Lepore and Kevin Eagan.
“Greater Hartford is performing well, but we’re still undervalued compared to Fairfield County and some major markets,” Lepore said. “People are realizing they can move from major markets to raise their families or just live in a nice environment for a fraction of the price.”
Lepore noted that buyers squeezed out by other bidders often consider lower-priced houses, widen their search area, or sit tight, hoping market prices will align with their budget. However, many analysts expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by the end of the summer, potentially bringing more buyers into the market and prompting more listings from sellers ready to move.
Last week, the average fixed interest rate on a 30-year mortgage rose slightly to 6.95 percent. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage average hit 7.79 percent last October, the highest level since 2000 when the average inched above 8 percent.
From 16,700 properties listed for sale in May 2019, as tracked by Realtor.com, there were about 3,800 on the market this past May, putting pressure on buyers to be ready with competitive offers.
“You really have to consider waiving your contingencies and just take the house — and sometimes that doesn’t even matter,” Lepore said. “You’ve got houses going hundreds of thousands over asking, and people are losing the house.”
Of more than 3,230 Connecticut properties that sold in June, it took just a week from listing to contract for the median home in that group, Berkshire Hathaway reported in its second-quarter report on the statewide market. Over the first six months of 2024, Connecticut’s median house sold for $390,000, nearly $40,000 above the equivalent home in the first half of last year, equating to an 11 percent increase.
Statewide, dating back to January, more than 130 houses sold for $1 million or more through Wednesday, as tracked by Zillow, from a two-bedroom on a tight lot in Norwalk’s Cranbury neighborhood at the start of the year, to a raised ranch in Thompson on more than five acres of land.
A newly constructed home on Dairy Road in Greenwich was the top sale in Connecticut for the first half of 2024, at $16.25 million, selling for $100,000 more than an Indian Field Road home in Greenwich. Tennis star Ivan Lendl’s estate, spanning Cornwall and Goshen, sold in January for $12 million and remains the largest mansion and property sold in Connecticut this year, with 18,000 square feet of total space and nearly 450 acres of land in the Litchfield County hills.
Connecticut houses are selling this year for 3.1 percent above owners’ final asking prices, according to Berkshire Hathaway. In Zillow’s most recent assessment of price ratios in nearly 625 metropolitan areas nationally, the Hartford area ranked fourth nationally in April, with sellers getting 4.7 percent above asking prices. That trailed only metropolitan Rochester, New York; San Jose, California; and Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Greater New Haven ranked in the top dozen nationally for sale premiums above asking prices, and the Bridgeport-Stamford corridor in the top 20.
Despite inflated prices in many cities and towns, several have seen sales accelerate in 2024. Of cities and towns where at least 25 properties sold in the second quarter, Putnam led the state in sales momentum with transactions nearly doubling from a year earlier, according to preliminary town-by-town totals published by Berkshire Hathaway.
In Avon, Middlebury, Winchester, Windham, and Woodbridge, transactions were up by more than half from the second quarter of 2023; and transactions were up by more than a third in Cheshire, Clinton, Colchester, Cromwell, Lebanon, and North Branford.
However, higher interest rates and prices, coupled with near-historic lows in new listings, have resulted in lower sales overall. While Stamford remains Connecticut’s most active real estate market with 485 sales in the first half, that was down 10 percent from a year earlier. Second-quarter sales were down nearly a third, despite listings accelerating into the spring market.
The CEO of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty sees the 2024 market hinging on interest rates, setting up the possibility for an active fall market.
