All the data we typically look at is related to single family homes. But how are condos doing this year? I recently pulled the CT Multiple Listing Service data for condo sales in the Greater Hartford area. As with the single family home data, it’s deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Here’s how things are doing for the first 9 months of this year compared to the same time period for 2008…
My Observations…
1. The number of Closed Sales for 2009 is off significantly for many of the towns when comparing to 2008. Aggregated, the number of Closed Sales in these towns decreased by 16%.
2. Surprisingly, Median Sale Prices don’t seem to be off as much as one would think when taking into account the overall decline in Closed Sales.
3. The last column of data related to current Months of Inventory is telling an interesting story. The cells shaded blue are the towns that are currently a Neutral market (between 3-6 months of inventory). Manchester, shaded green, is a Seller’s market (less than 3 months of inventory). The remaining towns, shaded peach, are Buyer’s markets (6+ months of inventory). Particularly noteworthy, and not in a good way, are Bloomfield, Hartford, and West Hartford. These three towns have well over a year’s worth of inventory and almost a year’s worth of inventory, respectively. Sellers in these markets really need to make sure they are pricing correctly if they want any chance of their property selling.