Expert Advice from Amy & Kyle Bergquist
Fierce competition for quality single-family properties in Greater Hartford has forced buyers to think hard about every aspect of their offer. How much should they offer to pay? Is their financing as strong as possible? What about their other terms? For buyers willing to offer a strong price, and who are already doing everything they can to optimize their financing, an additional way to make their bid stand out from the crowd is to submit
The Hartford County real estate market fell well off the 2020 pace in February. The month finished with 715 single-family contracts compared to 864 last February before the pandemic hit, a decline of over 17%. This February’s total was also only slightly higher than the January 2021 total, signaling something unusual in the market. We have seen flat month-over-month performance to begin the year in our dataset before, but the prior examples were in years
The 2021 Greater Hartford market is extremely hot. Buyer demand is very high, and seller inventory is very low. In fact, we are so concerned about the imbalances that we discussed the possibility of going to Inventory Zero later this spring. If you want to buy a home this spring, here are some suggestions… Accept that you are going to be competing for every home. There are many more buyers looking for a home than
42% of Hartford County single-family sales closed for more than asking price in 2020 according to SmartMLS. An additional 12% of sales closed at the asking price. Note that these stats exclude new construction listings since they work differently than resale listings. Regular readers are fully aware that the real estate market favored sellers in 2020, and continues to favor sellers in 2021. Our analysis of closed prices found that less than half of last
Inventory Zero: When there are no more houses available for buyers to bid on. The Greater Hartford real estate market enters the spring of 2021 in a precarious position. Inventory of available single-family homes in Hartford County was driven sharply down in 2020 by the combination of extremely high buyer demand and moderately low seller supply. The chart below shows the active single-family listings in the County on a monthly basis going back to 2017.