Mixed Signals

The latest issue of the Commercial Record illustrates our current problem for sellers and buyers.  If you look at New Haven county for June, the most recent month available, compared to the same month last year, sales are down by 12% and prices for the whole county are up by almost 6%.  If you look just at the shoreline towns and add Woodbridge, to try to capture the higher end of the market, sales are slightly up and prices are down.  Go figure. 

I guess the lesson as a whole is that we can't pay too much attention to what we read in the national press.  Connecticut is following its own, slower, path to recovery.  Our listors at the high end of the market are beginning to accept that there seems to be a ceiling on prices for luxury homes, and that no one can say what a given home is "worth".  We can predict that it won't sell for what the seller thinks it should, given what money is in the house and what the condition is, but we can't find examples that will pinpoint the exact price.  We can't even promise that it will sell at a lower price, nor can we swear that we're not "making a market" by lowering prices, causing low prices to slip lower.  What can we say?  We can tell buyers that it's a great time to buy direct waterfront, or properties over a million dollars.

In other submarkets, the picture is murkier.  The numbers of months of supply in houses has declined, and is now in the range of a balanced market.  That should mean that neither seller or buyer has an advantage.  But, depending upon where you are, and the type of house you have, you could find a bidding war or few showings, with maybe a lowball offer.  However, the only way to test the market is to put the property on at a "fair" price and see. 

There is a bump every fall, when buyers try to close and move before the end of the year, and, this season, it may tell the final tale of 2013.  Let's see what happens.  We do know this--mortgage rates, over the long run, matter much more than a few thousand dollars here or there in the sales price.  So buyers should definitely act, because interest rates have already gone up about 15% from their lowest point, and will likely rise further after the elections.  Time is fleeting--carpe diem!

Prices Holding Steady

When we look at the real estate market statistics from last year in Greater New Haven, we don't have much to crow about. All around, it was a blah year, made that way mainly after the tax credits expired in June. However, one thing that is surprising is that the prices didn't go down as much as you might think. Our Guilford office had a mean sales price only 1% or so down from 2009. Our market as a whole was down about 2.9%.

Those figures don't jibe with what the average person on the street thinks. Why is perception so different? One reason is that many things didn't sell at all, and, if they did, they had been reduced one or more times before they went under contract. Also, as we must always point out, these statistics are not the same as in other industries, because the same homes aren't selling every year. Therefore, the particular mix of homes could change, although that is less true when you look at numbers over a whole year. So it could have been that the home that sold for $330,000 in 2010 was as good or better than the average $340,000 one from the year before.

What the numbers do show is that people went for value. Properties that sold were in good to excellent condition, in established neighborhoods, and were priced to sell. Buyers tended to feel that they were in the driver's seat, and could choose among a broad range of options (which, as I've discussed before, was less true than they thought--another example of mistaken perceptions trumping reality).

What does it bode for this year? Value is still important. Basic conservatism will still prevail. Sellers who don't have to sell will still not sell unless and until they can avoid steep cuts. Buyers will continue to be fussy. But, finally, the market will improve. Maybe slowly, but clearly. And we can't wait!

Second Quarter Results

We just released second quarter statistics from the Greater New Haven region, which showed a major uptick from the same quarter of last year. Of course, the homebuyer tax credit was expiring, so there was a rush to close units while that was still in place. Also, however bad the economy still is, there is some national sense that things are better than in 2009, and the base of comparison was therefore low.

Within the region, Guilford and Woodbridge had the highest prices, with Madison coming in third. Prices generally went down from the second quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year, and then climbed in the second quarter of this year. Unit sales went up more sharply, rising 20% from last year's second quarter through this year at the same time.

It would be interesting to know how many of the sales were from properties which have been on the market for a long time, languishing at high prices, where a price reduction sparked an offer. Anecdotally, we know that many of the stories we hear involve sellers who are finally putting things on where they will sell. They are helped in their efforts by mortgage rates, which are so low that they allow for buyers to feel that they are getting a good deal, based on monthly payments. A recent article in a national paper suggested that buyers are trading up as a way to lock in cheap money. Let's hope so!