We have heard a number of theories as to why buyers are active so early in the year. One is that the lack of snow has everyone acting like it’s spring. Another line of thinking is that buyers who had their search derailed by the Halloween snow storm and subsequent power outage regrouped after New Year’s weekend and resumed their search. Finally others believe that the activity level is up due to favorable buying conditions. The truth is most likely a combination of these, and other, factors. But the end result is a quick start to the year.

There are a few main factors that play into the favorable buying conditions that we should note:

1. Mortgage rates are very low with 30-year fixed loans often having interest rates below 4%. The government announced that they plan to keep short-term rates at current levels for years, so it is possible mortgage rates may also remain quite low for an extended period.

2. Prices have fallen back to the levels of the early 2000s, making homes much more affordable than they were near the peak in 2006/2007.

3. Buyer confidence has increased to the point where people seem comfortable with the idea of either becoming homeowners or moving up to a larger property. This is partially a reflection of the local business environment where we see companies more inclined to hire workers than lay them off. There also appears to be more people relocating to the Hartford area for jobs than there has been over the past few years.

We’re expecting a busy spring real estate market in 2012 and already see activity picking up. Sellers should feel comfortable listing their homes at any point in the next few months, as buyers are already out there bidding. Buyers need to realize that they will have competition for the most desirable homes and plan their bidding strategies accordingly.

Last week we looked at the really big picture transactions data for Hartford County in 2011. The main concern we had with how the numbers turned out was that the average single-family home price appeared to rise slightly from 2010 to 2011, which was not what we saw in the market on a house by house basis.

There is no easy way to track the price trends in a region because every house is unique. Repeat sales is the best method I know of, but it’s too hard for us to use. Anyway, we were talking averages in the post. Our hypothesis as to why the average might be misleading in this case is that averages can be influenced by a change in the mix of homes that sold between the two years. They are especially susceptible to sales of expensive homes since one million dollar property contributes as much to the total sales volume as five $200,000 homes.

The first step we took to test our hypothesis was to look at how the mix of sales changed between the two years.

The chart shows that the number of sales increased in the sub-$100,000 price band and also in all three price bands above $500,000. It also shows that the $100,000s remained almost exactly the same. Finally, the number of deals in the $200,000s fell by about 20%, while both the $300,000s and $400,000s fell by about 12%. The chart confirms our anecdotal observation that there is was more interest in high end properties in 2011, but doesn’t address our hypothesis in a convincing manner.

What if we plotted the total sales volume for each price band instead of the number of deals? That would put each of the price points on equal footing in terms of their contribution to the average.

This chart shows that the homes that sold for less than $100,000 matter very little in the average. But otherwise the chart is not conclusive about whether the average remained the same due to prices holding steady between the two years or some other reason.

Maybe we should just throw in the towel on the average as a proxy for home prices and move over to the median. Between 2010 and 2011 the median single-family home price in Hartford County fell 3.3% from $230,000 to $222,500.

Or we can just trust our observations of the market … home prices fell in 2011.

Observations

The total number of single-family home transactions fell again in 2011, decreasing about 8% from the 2010 total. With the latest data point, activity for this type of property is about 41% off the 2005 peak in Hartford County. Last year we wondered whether we had seen a bottom in the number of deals – clearly 2010 was not the bottom.

As sales volume fell, showing a decrease in overall demand, the average sales price was apparently not changed. We don’t put a lot of faith in average prices because they are strongly influenced by the mix of homes that sold in a particular year, so we think something else is going on.

Our anecdotal experience is that home prices are still falling in all the towns and markets in which we do business. We also see more interest in higher priced homes, which will tend to inflate the average, and believe that’s why the average sale price edged up slightly. We’ll work on building the case to either prove or refute this hypothesis and share that result too.

Big picture analysis like this is never especially satisfying since we usually end up with more questions than answers. What are you guys seeing out there as you follow the markets? Michael called 2011 almost perfectly in the comments from last year’s post, so we clearly have knowledgeable readers!

Also, we have this data broken down by every single town in Hartford County. If you’re interested in a specific town, email us and we’ll send you the charts.

December is traditionally the slowest month of the year, so having it outpace any other month is a bit of a surprise. We think that the usually large snow storm, which was felt through the beginning of November, worked to push some business into the year’s final month.

This December also showed an uptick in activity compared to December of 2010. The number of homes that went under contract this past month is nearly 10% higher than the total from the previous year. It’s difficult to know how much of this observation can also be attributed to the snow storm. Our feeling is that it is not a result that we should read too much meaning into.

Results were well distributed at the town level, though not over as extreme a range as we have seen in previous months. More interesting is that the number of homes actively for sale has come down to about 6.6 months worth of inventory. It was at 7.3 months in the November report, and peaked at 8.8 months in the June report.

Inventory levels should be lower at the beginning of the year. Many sellers take their properties off the market over the holidays so they don’t have to worry about keeping their home in “show condition” and accommodating visits from potential buyers. New listings will begin to come on the market at a steady pace, and the pace will increase as we get through the winter and closer to the traditional spring real estate season.

We’re working on our 2012 real estate predictions, and will hope to have some more analysis of 2011 available in the coming weeks.

Perhaps winter arrived a little early this year in Greater Hartford; we all know that the snow did. Widespread power outages beginning with the storm on October 29th impacted the real estate market for the entire first week of November. Buyers were focused on other priorities and sellers’ homes and properties we in no condition to show, never mind impress. There were few, if any, showings until the weekend of 11/5 when brave buyers began to tour unlit homes with their flashlights. With the storm at the beginning of November, and Thanksgiving at the end, we were lucky to have two solid weeks during the month for real estate.

Switching over to the sell side of the equation, it feels like there is very little new inventory entering the market right now. It can be weeks between interesting new listings that match our buyers’ search criteria. November is not traditionally a popular time to put a home on the market, but it may be a good strategy in some of the more active submarkets where there are buyers actively looking. If a home shows very well, and is properly priced versus the competition (mostly listings that didn’t sell during the fall), then it should generate interest.

Homes that have been on a long time without selling probably are best served by coming off the market for a few months over the holidays. Buyers tend to tune them out over time, so laying low for a little while can work in the sellers’ favor. When sellers relist in the spring there will (hopefully) be lots of new people in the buyer pool who will be excited to go see the home for the first time.

Here are the town-by-town stats for the month of November – they are even more scattered than usual.

Today we turn our attention to analyzing the big picture results of the revaluation. Amanda Falcone’s piece in the Thursday’s Hartford Courant quotes West Hartford Assessor Joseph Dakers Sr. as saying the new market values will “likely cause the town’s grand list to decrease by 5.6%, or about $316 million.”

Based on that statement, and a number of additional steady state assumptions detailed below, we’re projecting the new mill rate to end up somewhere between 33 and 34 mills. If accurate, it would represent about a 2% average increase in the tax burden on real property owners, and a 15% decrease taxes on personal property (business equipment) and motor vehicles.

We would expect individual property owners to experience much larger swings in their tax burdens depending on their specific properties. Some will experience larger increases, while others will see their taxes go down. It will all depend on how their individual properties were assessed during each of the two previous revaluations. A ballpark figure for future tax burden can be calculated using the following formula:

Our mill rate is a very rough estimate, but we feel it is an accurate depiction of what is likely to happen if the proposed market values hold and basically everything else stays the same. It analyzes the impact of the revaluation without addressing any other factors that may impact the Town budget.

Please feel free to check our work, which is shown below in detail, and post your thoughts in the comments.

Step 1: Interpreting the Data
The whole calculation is based on the Town Assessor’s statement that $316 million is about 5.6% of Grand List 2010. So:

The context of the quote doesn’t specify exactly what the Assessor means when he says “Grand List.” Is he talking about the market values, Gross Assessment (70% of market value), or the Net Assessment (after all exemptions are subtracted out)? Is it for only Real Property or does it include Personal Property and Motor Vehicles?

Last year I worked with the Assessor a bit when Grand List 2010 was released, modeling the whole system. In comparing the “Grand List” number he seems to be working with now to that spreadsheet, my conclusion is that he is talking about the total Gross Assessment for Real Property. Since the revaluation is focused exclusively on Real Property, this seems like a reasonable conclusion. Below is a summary of the taxes generated last year by Grand List 2010 (Note: Gross Assessment and Exemptions sourced from a report emailed to me by the Town Assessor in February 2010).

These calculations show that the Town would have sent out property tax bills totaling about $197 million. Page F-2 of the 2011-2012 Annual Town Budget shows a table summarizing the Town’s revenues, discussing property taxes, and showing the tax collection rate. It shows Current Property Taxes in the Fiscal Year 2012 Adopted Budget as $195,496,802. So our calculation of the billings is quite close to what the Town expected to receive – a good sign. Our calculation gets even closer to the target when we include their assumed 99% tax collection rate.

Step 2: Defining Assumptions
The agreement of our calculation with the Town Assessor’s quote and the expected revenue provide enough confidence to move on to the next stage of the calculation. But before we can run more numbers, we need to be explicit about our assumptions. Here are the five main assumptions in our forward looking analysis and projections.

1. The Town Assessor was properly quoted in the Courant, and we have properly interpreted what he said. The discussion above provides two independent points of collaboration, which makes us feel good.

2. Personal Property and Motor Vehicle Gross Assessments remain unchanged.

3. Town revenue raised from Property Taxes remains unchanged.

4. All phase-in exemptions are eliminated. We’ve discussed the frozen phase-in elsewhere and will skip over it this time. It’s important, but is not the focus of this analysis.

5. All “normal” exemptions remain unchanged.

Step 3: Projecting Grand List 2011
Now we’re ready to update the table from above to reflect our assumptions for Grand List 2011.

First we calculated the new Gross Assessment for Real Property by subtracting $316 million. Next, we eliminated the Phase-In Exemptions, so everyone is taxed based on the market values determined by this revaluation. Finally, we optimized the Mill Rate so that the total Tax Revenue exactly equals the previous table.

The resulting 33.67 mill rate is more precise that we can reasonably calculate given the rough nature of this estimate, so at the top of the story we said that it would end up somewhere between 33 and 34.

So there it is, our attempt to ballpark the West Hartford mill rate for the tax year starting in July 2012. We have no doubt that there will be factors outside of the revaluation that will impact the Town, and therefore the budget. However, we hope this provides a starting point for understanding how the revaluation will impact property tax revenue.

Again, please feel free to post questions, concerns, and thoughts in the comments section.

Related Posts
West Hartford Revaluation 2011 – Informal Hearings
West Hartford Revaluation
West Hartford Revaluation, Part II
Property Taxes and Revaluations

Before going any further, it is very important to emphasize three key points:
1. Property taxes don’t change until July 2012.
2. Taxes would be calculated based on the “New Property Assessment” in the bottom right of the letter, not the market value.
3. The mill rate will change, so multiplying the current mill rate by the “New Property Assessment” is not a reliable estimate of future taxes.

Although the overall timeline extends through spring and into July, there is immediate action required for West Hartford homeowners who are concerned about the Market Values assigned to their properties.

The Town will be holding informal hearings on proposed market values through most of the month of December. Owners who wish to challenge their value need to call 860-561-7598 by Friday 12/9/2011 between 9:00 and 4:00 in order to schedule a one-on-one appointment.

Once you’re on the schedule, you should gather some market data to support your contention that the market value assigned to your property is too high. There are a couple of primary sources of information. The Assessor’s office has a number of large binders on their public tables in which you can look up sales information. They have also loaded the new market values of all the properties in town into the Vision Database. Finally, real estate agents can also help by gathering data through the MLS.

We have been in contact with the Assessor’s office in an effort to understand the big picture results of the revaluation. Most importantly, we have asked for their rough projections of what the mill rate would be if the current proposed market values held, and if the Town budget remained flat. We have also asked for data that will (hopefully) allow us to run different projections and scenarios of our own.

Until the Assessor’s office comes though with some information, our observations are limited to what we discover by looking at the market values of individual homes through the Vision system.

Most properties that we have reviewed showed a decreasing market value compared to the previous year, which is actually the value of the property according to the 2006 revaluation. Decreasing market values make sense since the market has definitely weakened over the past five years.

Comparing the new market value to the old market value is interesting, but not terribly useful. After the 2006 revaluation the Town decided to phase in the new values, but later froze the phase-in after the second year. The result of this decision is that for many homeowners the new market value is actually higher than the one on which their taxes are currently calculated.

For example, one home in Town was assigned a value of about $280k in the 2006 revaluation. Two years into the phase-in the taxable market value had increased to about $210k – still considerably below fair market. That value got locked in once the phase-in was frozen. Revaluation 2011 has set the value of this home at about $270k, so even though the market value has fallen since 2006, it’s still going to experience a step up in taxable market value. (We know this is confusing, it took us quite a while to understand, and model, the 2006 phase-in. Please feel free to email questions or post them in the comments.)

The revaluation has not treated all homes that sold in 2011 equally. Some properties that sold were assigned their sales price as the market value, which seems quite reasonable. Others were not … we saw one that was assigned a value meaningfully lower than the sales price.

That’s all we have for the moment. Check back in over the coming weeks – we’ll post additional information and analysis as it is available. And West Hartford homeowners, don’t forget to review the proposed market values in the letters you received and decide if you want to challenge your values.

Related Posts
West Hartford Revaluation
West Hartford Revaluation, Part II
Property Taxes and Revaluations

The County remains on track to exceed 2010′s total number of contracts. We need to have 635 homes go under contract in the last two months in order to match 2010, which is a reasonable number despite December traditionally being the slowest month of the year for contracts.

Fallout from the late-October winter storm, and the widespread power outages that came with it, definitely impacted the local real estate markets. Essentially, we had a week off as there were very few showings. That’s not to say we, or real estate agents overall, weren’t busy. As homeowners we had some cleanup to do on our property. And we spent a fair amount of time working with our sellers who had some work to do at their homes.

Once the weekend arrived we began to see signs of life. One West Hartford agent called asking to see a listing even though the home did not have power. He still did not have power at his home, and his buyer client did not have power either, but they were both ready to get back out there and look at homes again – flashlights in hand.

The market could go in one of two ways from here. Hopefully it will pick up where it left off before the storm and continue into late November, as often happens. The alternative is that buyers could just pack it in for the year and turn their attention to the holidays. This week should give us a good sense of buyer sentiment, and how likely we will be to beat 2010′s contract total.

There was a lot of interest in our markets at the beginning of September; it was a noticeable increase from the end of August and much of the summer. The rest of the month seemed pretty active too, so I’m a bit surprised to see the number of contracts come in at a lower level than August, though 35 deals (532 in August versus 497 in September) isn’t a huge number.

Looking a little deeper at last month versus this month, it appears that two towns experienced major slowdowns that nearly equal the total for the County. The number of contracts accepted in Southington decreased by 15 deals from August, while Windsor decreased by 13. Other towns also saw a less active September, but not by such a wide margin. Manchester, East Hartford, and Marborough reported decreases in the number of contracts of 8, 7, and 6 respectively. On the other side of the ledger, the town Bristol was up 7 deals and Glastonbury was up 6 deals.

Each town is its own market, and this is yet another example of how the data can vary. Below is the year over year comparison for each town in the County, showing a 12% increase in activity for September 2011 over the same month in 2010.

Hurricane Irene passed through the County during the final week of the month, putting most of the real estate market on hold for at least three days, with some areas affected through the end of the month. We don’t know for sure how much of an impact it had, but feel comfortable saying that the number of deals would have been higher without the storm – there were essentially no showings over the storm weekend.

Interest in the real estate market seems to be picking up after the extended period of downtime caused by the storm and holiday on back-to-back weekends. It will be interesting to see how the fall market plays out this year, and ultimately how the year ends. As the chart above shows, the market is about 1.5x as busy during the warm months as it is during the cold months. It’s a noticeable difference, but there are definitely buyers making offers on homes all year.

Inventory levels decreased slightly during the month, suggesting that either the pace of deals increased or the pace of listings slowed. August showed fewer contracts than July – the pace of deals slowed – so the pace of listings must have slowed even more.

We’ve mentioned this before, but it’s something worth repeating … buyers have an opportunity to get into homes at prices well off the peak, and with very attractive interest rates. This applies to move-up buyers in addition to first-time buyers. Just give it some thought … we’ll be happy to show you what’s available.

Here’s how the month went for each of the individual towns.