Greater Hartford's 2008 Real Estate Market Statistics

So, just how bad was the 2008 real estate market in the Greater Hartford area? The numbers are in. They’re not necessarily pretty, but they’re not as ugly as they could be either. The data below is from the CTMLS and is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. All information is for single family home sales only…



My observations…

1. The number of closed sales was down in every town but one. Newington saw a 1% increase in the number of closings when comparing 2008 to 2007. In the aggregate, the towns surveyed were off by 17% from the number of 2007 single family closings. That is fairly significant, as this number does not additionally take into account the people that unsuccessfully tried to sell their homes, only to give up and pull them off the market.

2. Median sale prices also declined in all but two of the towns surveyed. West Hartford saw no change in the median price and Simsbury actually saw a 4% increase in their median sale price. I was surprised to see that price declines were not worse than 10% in most cases. Only 4 towns saw median prices decrease by 10% or more; Avon, Manchester, New Britain, and Vernon. Not fantastic, but we’re also not anywhere near the price erosion that’s happening in Miami, Las Vegas, Phoenix, or California.

3. Days on Market really did not make any drastic changes. In the worst case, the Average Days on Market increased by 2 weeks. This is fairly insignificant in the scheme of things.

4. While the number of closed sales and median sale prices are down in almost all of these towns, only 3 of the towns surveyed are currently Buyer’s Markets. Avon, Canton, and Farmington all have over 6 months of housing inventory, which is typically an indication of a Buyer’s Market. The remainder of the towns have 6 months of inventory or less, indicating that they are Neutral Markets. West Hartford, Newington, and New Britain are actually fairly close to being Seller’s Markets, with just around 3 months of inventory. Zero to three months of inventory typically denotes a Seller’s Market. There are a few reasons why there are so few Buyer’s Markets right now, given the fact that sales and prices are down; fewer people could be deciding to sell and we’ve worked through some of the fall/winter inventory on the market as we wait for the Spring Sellers to enter the game.

Throughout the next week I’ll be posting graphs and other market statistics related to each of these towns. We’ll start with Avon and Bloomfield on Tuesday and go from there. If you have questions about this data or any other data along the way, just let me know and I’ll try to provide answers.