January Contracts: A Fast Start to 2012

The number of single-family homes that went under contract in January 2012 jumped 14% over January of last year. The total of 458 deals that came together signals that the local real estate markets are off and running for 2012. 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

2011 Average Prices and Sales Mix

Warning: What follows is quite dorktacular. You have been warned. 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

2011 Closed Stats From 50,000 Feet

Last year we gathered up all the Hartford County residential transactions since the beginning of the CTMLS in 2000 and showed how the very high level trends had changed over 10 years. Today we update those charts with the data from 2011. As always, the CTMLS is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Observations The total number of single-family home transactions fell again in 2011, decreasing about 8% from the 2010 total. With the latest data

December Contracts: Making Up For November

December single-family contracts came in at 357 for Hartford County, which was slightly higher that the number of deals that came together in November. 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

November Contracts: Winter in New England

November is traditionally the time of year when real estate activity begins to slow. We did see a modest fall-off in deals, but it was not a big surprise, and was an average of recent results. Last year November was more in line with October than December, while in 2009 it was an even larger decrease from October than we’re seeing right now. Perhaps winter arrived a little early this year in Greater Hartford; we