Greater Hartford Real Estate Blog

I’ve been cruising around the web looking for some new local blogs to visit on a daily basis. I found a few winners and I’d like to share them. I’ve also added them to my BlogRoll for your convenience. Enjoy!

Hartford Scoop is a relatively new blog and focuses on “all things related to Hartford.” They have a good mix of suggestions for hip, social things to do and opinion pieces. They seem a little too cool for my lifestyle, but at least I’m now in the know regarding “the scene” in Hartford.

Real Hartford has been around since March, just like my blog. It’s mostly current events and opinion pieces. It made my evening to find out that the main Hartford Public Library branch has its books back…

Urban Compass has been around since May 2005. Holy moly. That’s a dedicated blogger. It started as a Springfield, MA blog, but its author moved to Hartford in June of 2007. She’s a fellow neighbor in the West End, so that earns a soft spot in my heart. The blog covers Hartford happenings, Springfield happenings, and general musings. I enjoy the blogs that parallel the issues that Hartford and Springfield both face.

I was hunkered down in my house in Hartford today, catching up on some reading for the week. Here are some interesting articles I found related to the real estate/housing market. We’ll start with the micro-economic and move to the macro-economic…

The Hartford Business Journal addresses the fact that the West Farms Mall seems to be doing just fine, even with the opening of Blue Back Square. Tiffany & Co. will be opening a 6,000 square foot store and P.F. Chang’s will add to the restaurant options for West Farms.

We still have buildable land available in Hartford county, so we don’t see too much in the way of teardowns here. But Greenwich is a hotbed for “rebuilds” or “remodels,” as the agents in Fairfield county like to refer to them.

An interesting analysis by Kiplinger on the rise and fall of several housing markets across the US and their predicition for the upcoming 2008 market. I personally prefer anything other than what NAR publishes for forecasts, as I believe they have an incentive to spin things positively no matter what the reality.

Finally, here’s a fairly technical breakdown by Alan Greenspan regarding the macroeconomic environment that lead to the current mortgage crisis. He feels that various market bubbles cannot be fixed by monetary policy or other policy initiatives- the speculative fever needs to run its course. He predicts that housing market will return to “normal” when the overabundance of new construction is consumed and housing price deflation ends. This article is not for the faint of heart…