September Contracts: A Tentative Return

2017-10-02 Hartford County Single Family Contracts in September 2017

Hartford County finished September with 739 single-family home contracts, in line with the September 2016 result. On a year-to-date basis, 2017 is about 1% ahead of 2016 in terms of the total number of deals.

This month our series on contract data tentatively returns. The local MLS system still does not allow the method of data gathering that we have been doing since 2009, but tech support helped us find a workaround. It is more difficult to collect the information, but we believe it is comparable to our previous process. We will scrutinize the results each month for the rest of the year to make sure the data continues to look correct.

Although we feel good about the accuracy of the September data point, we believe that the August numbers are understated. August results were re-collected yesterday using the new collection process. Measuring the number of contracts at the same time each month, shortly after month end, is important because deals tend to fall apart over time. For every 100 contracts in place at the end of the month, there might only be 95 (hypothetically) in which the buyer and seller are still working together 30 days later. Because the August number shown in the top chart was collected in early October, it is very likely that the August total would have been higher if it had been collected in early September.

With the disclaimers out of the way, it is good to be able to look at market activity again in near real time. Deal counts have been falling over the past two months, as is typical of late summer. Hopefully there will be a small uptick in activity during October as the fall market kicks in. At the big picture level, 2017 has been a strong year for the local real estate markets.

Trends by price band show a slight increase in deals in the $100,000s, the $200,000s, and the $300,000s. Those three price bands represent over 79% of the single-family contracts in Hartford County, showing that there is strength at price points representing our core housing stock.

Inventory levels continue to be neutral below $400,000, and then increase to favor buyers as the price point rises. At the extreme end of the price spectrum, there has been a decrease in the number of million dollar homes that have gone under contract this year compared to last year. There are so many million dollar homes on the market that it would take over 2 years to sell them all at the recent pace of deals. It continues to be a good time to be a high end buyer in Greater Hartford.

2017-10-02 Hartford County Single Family Contracts in September 2017 by Town