Greater Hartford Real Estate Blog

Last week the results for the Connecticut Mastery Test were released to the public.  The Courant has put together a nice page for quickly seeing data, while the official results website allows users to generate detailed reports.

As expected, there has been a flurry of commentary on the results for different towns.  The West Hartford results are being debated on West Hartford Forums, Talk of West Hartford, and The West Hartford Blog.  I’m sure that there are other places also.

Rather that rehashing what has already been said, let’s keep the focus on real estate and take a look at the relationship between test scores and home prices.  Will buying a home in a town with higher median home prices provide access to better performing schools (based on CMT results)?

 

The above graph shows test scores for each town (average performance of eighth graders) as a function of the town’s median home prices (second quarter of 2008).  It is interesting to note that test scores and median home price seems to be correlated.  I’m sure there are other factors that influence the relationship. Anyone up for running a regression analysis…

With the end of June came just about the end of the spring real estate market. So how did we do in the Greater Hartford area when comparing single family home sales in the second quarter of 2008 to the same time period in 2007? Take a look for yourself…

All data came from the Multiple Listing Service for the time period of April through June (2007 and 2008) and is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed.

With agents complaining about the market being slow, we can see why. The number of closed sales is down in almost all towns researched, with several towns seeing declines in closed sales of 20% or more. The market was lethargic in many areas this spring.

We are also finally starting to see median sales price declines as well. There is a wide range in median sales price declines. A few towns saw small increases.

Days on market (DOM) is also increasing, but modestly. Most towns did not see more than a week or two added to selling time, if there was an increase.

Most surprising to me is the Months of Inventory. Many towns have moved back into Neutral Market territory (favoring neither Sellers nor Buyers), which is historically defined as 3-6 months of inventory. With declines in the number of closed sales, this could mean one of two things; fewer people decided to sell this year or people did try to sell and took their homes off the market if they were not successful after a specific time period.

Historically, sales in July and August are slow, as people are busy with summer vacations and other activities. It will be interesting to see how the market does over the next few months.

If you are looking for data for another town which I did not include, just ask and I’ll be happy to provide it.

Thanks to a loyal reader for the request of data on additional towns. If you would like to see other towns, just comment on this blog, or send me an email offline.

All info presented is from the Multiple Listing Service as of today, for single family homes only, deemed reliable, but not guaranteed…

There are 75 homes available for sale in Newington and 50 under contract waiting to close. Average days on market is 59 days. Newington is still a fast paced market and one of the more affordable towns for first time buyers.

There are 118 homes available for sale in Wethersfield and 32 under contract waiting to close. Average days on market is 57 days. Higher end sellers in Wethersfield don’t have much competition, but only 8 properties closed in the last year that were priced more than $500K. That means there is a year’s worth of inventory on the market for this price range.

There are 50 homes available for sale in Rocky Hill and 14 under contract waiting to close. Average days on market is 52 days. Most of Rocky Hill’s higher end prices come from homes built in the late 1990’s or early 2000’s, rather than brand new construction.

There are 82 homes available for sale in South Windsor and 35 under contract waiting to close. Average days on market is 73 days. Seller’s in the $300K-$400K range don’t have much competition in a price range that typically accounts for 25% of the sales in this town.

There are 220 homes available for sale in Manchester and 92 under contract waiting to close. Average days on market is 68 days. There are 80 homes on the market in Manchester at $200K or below. Manchester offers a lot of affordable opportunities for first time buyers, with a reasonable commute time to Downtown Hartford and surrounding towns.

There are 174 homes available for sale in Glastonbury and 55 under contract waiting to close. Average days on market is 74 days. 28% of the homes on the market in Glastonbury were built in 2007 or are to be built in 2008.