Art and/or Assault

Below is something that I came across in the garage of a bank owned home. For those who can’t quite make out what the picture shows, it’s a wooden bear statue with an ax embedded in its head. The bear is a small version of the sorts of bears that are made by chainsaw, while the ax appears to be rather standard in size & design and well used. Is the ax original to the

Going Once, Going Twice, Sold!

Five bank owned properties were auctioned off yesterday afternoon in Hartford. We learned about the auction a couple weeks ago thanks to a tip from a loyal reader about one specific home (thanks, Michael!). The property had been on the market with a realtor for a couple months, and we had even shown it a few times. We knew the bank was trying to get rid of it, but switching over to the auction format

Courant Companion: That Empty Feeling

The cover story of today’s real estate section features an article titled That Empty Feeling about the impact of vacant homes on a neighborhood. The wide-ranging piece provides a lot of interesting and important information about homes that are considered eyesores. A critical point in the overall thesis, and therefore a focal point of the article, is the example of a dilapidated property that actually hurts the value of neighboring homes. Unfortunately, a very poor

Multi Family Property in Distress

I had some downtime last night, so I decided to look through the MLS to see how the multi family markets are holding up in the current environment. Although multi family properties can be found throughout the region, they make up a small fraction of the overall residential market in most towns. I started by identifying the towns in which they represent a meaningful portion of the housing stock, which makes the data more interesting

Greater Hartford May 2009 Real Estate Market Statistics

Yesterday I was preparing my data for the May real estate market statistics post and this morning the Courant had an article about housing prices for the state as a whole. While aggregating the state as a whole is good for a macro economic perspective, your average Joe and Jane are more likely to be concerned with what’s going on in their town or the few towns surrounding where they live, as that’s what’s affecting