Statistics from the Region

It's tempting to make you all guess about market trends for 2010, but it would be hard for me to collect the responses in a timely way, so I guess I will just tell you. The latest Commercial Record shows that, for year over year sales from 2009 to 2010, New Haven County as a whole was down almost 8% in the number of sales. For the immediate towns, Guilford, Madison, North Haven, and Bethany had an increase from the prior year. Guilford and Madison were each up 9%, while the other two had smaller increases.

Surprisingly, the median prices were almost identical in 2009 and 2010, with 2010 coming in at 0.8% less. I expect that most of you would have guessed that prices fell about 10%, so the fact that they actually fell less than one percent is very good news. Of course, as I've often pointed out, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, so it's probably true that only the best houses sold, meaning that most homes would have sold for less in 2010 than in the prior year. As I've discussed in earlier posts, East Rock and Spring Glen did go up in price, showing the "Yale" effect most strongly. North Branford, with 24% fewer sales, had an increase of 10%, and Milford, Wallingford, and Woodbridge had smaller increases. New Haven as a whole crept up 1%.

It is important to recognize, as the issue said in another article, that this is the sixth year in a row that sales have declined. Since prices have also been declining for most of that period, the total decline is larger than what is listed for last year. And, since most homeowners looking to sell haven't been in the market for some time, those yearly decreases can really add up.

However, the fact that we are not in freefall is very good news, and the spring is still ahead of us. Anything could happen, but we're hoping for recovery mode to kick in strongly!

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!