The West Hartford real estate market feels like it’s moving very quickly these days. We’re especially noticing it since we have many buyer clients looking in the town and because the town is traditionally the most active real estate market in the county.
It is common to see new listings sell in a couple of days if they are priced right, and we’ve been seeing multiple offer situations on a regular basis. Despite the bidding wars, buyers still seem to be showing restraint in the prices they offer. We have not seen, or heard about, dueling escalation clause bids or over-the-top Godfather offers (An offer you can’t refuse).
Rather than simply relying on our feel for the market, we wanted to try to put some data behind our anecdotal evidence. We decided to look at all the homes that went under contract between March 1st and March 28th. These are properties that have not closed, but a buyer and seller have agreed to a price. Here’s what we find using residential data from the Multiple Listing Service, which is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed:
The number of signed contracts is up considerably over the same period last year. This reflects the increased activity in the market with buyers hustling to capture the Federal Home Buyer Credit and take advantage of the continued low interest rates.
More interesting is the sharp decrease in the median days on market, from 47 last year to 21 this year. This data more than confirms our observations. Properties are selling very quickly in West Hartford, so both buyers and sellers need to factor that into their plans and expectations. Buyers need to understand that they face a lot of competition right now, so they need to be prepared to act quickly and be willing to pay a fair price – the market is quite efficient.
Homeowners definitely have an opportunity if they are interested in selling a property that shows well. The sweet spot for sellers is in the $200k – $399k price range, which made up a larger percentage of the number of contracts in March than for 2009 overall.
For now, sellers still have to price their home appropriately in order to generate interest, but perhaps we’ll start to see more aggressive bids from buyers as the April 30th credit deadline draws near.