The inventory of available homes is the clear bottleneck in the Greater Hartford real estate market. Let’s take a detailed look at the number of active listings as of this morning, March 1, 2023.
Hartford County has 359 single-family homes for sale as of right now.
That total is the lowest that we’ve ever seen in reporting on this data since 2009. But wait, there’s more! Not more houses, unfortunately, but a more dire experience for buyers.
85 of the listings are “To Be Built” or “Under Construction.”
Although new construction is not a big part of the Hartford County market, there are some builders putting up houses. Most of these opportunities are in the $500,000 – $1,000,000 range, but there are a handful of new construction listing that are less expensive and more expensive.
Buyers may have to go this route if they don’t find other options, which seems more likely than normal since the 85 new construction listings means that there are only 274 existing houses for sale.
63 of the existing homes that are for sale have been on the market for more than 90 days.
Our feeling is that if a seller is not able to find a buyer within 90 days that they are not trying particularly hard. This signals to us that the seller may not be serious. They may be advertising their home, but they only seem interested in selling at their premium price. Subtracting unrealistic sellers from available inventory pushes the actionable listings down to 211 existing homes with reasonable sellers.
Why only consider sellers sitting there for 90 days as unreasonable? Why not look at everything that’s been on the market for 30+ days?
There isn’t a magic number of days after which a seller is unreasonable. The County has a lot of towns, and the individual price ranges in each town have different market dynamics. Although the regional market is unambiguously favorable to sellers, there are submarkets that are much less hot, making longer time on market reasonable.
But the point is taken, there are only 146 existing single-family homes for sale in Hartford County that have been on the market for 30 days of less. These are the newest listings, and the ones that buyers are most focused on.
Big picture … buyers are ready to go, but there continue to be alarmingly few sellers.
We have opinions and recommendations about how buyers should approach their home search in this market. Yes it’s competitive, but there are definitely steps buyers can take to make themselves more attractive to sellers. Reach out if you would like help!