May Contracts: The 2012 Spring Plateau

Hartford County real estate markets finished May with basically the same number of single-family deals as March and April. Looking at the chart below, one might think that the market has hit some sort of speed limit or something. Why haven’t we broken through the ceiling of about 750 deals per month? The only month on the chart with a higher total was April 2010, which was the deadline for collecting the Federal Home Buyer

April Contracts: A Sideways Step

April single-family contracts came in at about the same level as Hartford County saw last month. Activity remains much higher than we observed in 2011, and the month-to-month count of negotiated contracts seems to be following the same pattern as last year. We’ve already commented on much of what we’re seeing in the market right now. Some towns are very active, and multiple offer situations are common. Inventory is on the low side, so buyers

March Market Stats from West Hartford

The other day we wrote about the high levels of activity in the Hartford County market during the month of March. West Hartford really stood out on the chart because 83 homes went under contract, which dwarfed the next highest town – East Hartford with 53 contracts. Part of the model we built to analyze MLS contract data allows us to look at trends in individual towns. Here is the number of West Hartford contracts

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