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A Hot Greenwich Housing Market with Some Cool Sections; 31 Open Houses Today

The under $2 million Greenwich market is hot ; the $3 million-plus market is improving; there are more houses in the $10 million-plus range than in the under $1 million range.

Mark Pruner, Neighbor

Posted Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 5:24 am ET|Updated Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:20 am ET

These two charts show the bifurcated market that we are in. As you can see from inventory chart about 30% of our inventory is under $2 million, but when you look at the same price range on the sales chart going clockwise you can see that almost three quarters of our sales are in this same price range. Now if you look at the same two charts going counter-clockwise (or anti-clockwise for my client from the U.K.) you can see that you have to go more than half way around the inventory pie just to get down to the $3 million line. Do the same thing on the sales pie and you don’t have to go even a quarter way around the pie to get to the $3 million line i.e. the percent of sales over $3 million in March is only a third of the percent of inventory.

The result of this mismatch of sales and inventory is a sub-$1.5 million market with multiple bids and days on markets that can be in the single digits before they go to contract. At the other end of the spectrum we have 42 houses over $10 million that are waiting for buyers, many of these listings have been waiting for over a year. If you look at the sales chart for over $10 million you won’t find any pie slice at all because we are still waiting for a sale of an over $10 million house in 2013 despite the fact that this price bracket is 9% of our market.

Find out what's happening in Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

[For a more detailed discussion of the over $5 million real estate market see last week’s article Greenwich Over $5M, and Particularly Over $8M, Real Estate Sales in 1st Quarter Doldrums.]

As you can see from the contract pie chart we do have one pending sale over $10 million which equates to several years of supply. In total we have 146 accepted offers, contingent contracts and non-contingent contracts as of the beginning of April. The nice thing is the $2 – 3 million range has 25 pending contracts even though we have only had 14 sales in this price bracket so far this year. The percent of contracts under $2 million is even greater than percent of sales under $2 million so the lower end of the market is only getting hotter.

Find out what's happening in Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

March '13

Inventory

Contracts

Mar. Solds

Total

YTD Solds

YTD+Ks

Mos Supply

Mos w/ Ks

Instaneous Mos

< $600K

6.0

3.2

6.0

$600-$800K

5.7

3.7

4.8

$800K-$1M

6.5

3.4

13.0

$1-$1.5M

7.1

3.5

6.7

$1.5-$2M

11.6

7.1

7.3

$2-$3M

18.2

9.8

21.3

$3-$4M

32.1

17.8

75.0

$4-$5M

20.0

15.0

20.0

$5-7.5M

23.3

18.6

31.0

$7.5-$10M

84.0

31.5

28.0

> $10M

189.0

TOTAL

474

146

177

236

15.8

9.0

15.3

The good thing is that even though the under $2 million dollar market is getting even hotter, the pending contracts show that all the price ranges are getting tighter as months of supply come down. Our 146 pending contracts are almost five times the 31 sales in March as reported by the Greenwich MLS. We are still short of inventory with only 474 single-family home listings. We only have 12 houses under $600,000 and a total of 44 under $1 million. (For an analysis of the house and condo market’s check out Jared Randal’s blog.) The other thing you will notice about the months of supply beside the improving market is that we are missing the over $10 million market segment bars, because you can’t calculate months of supply with no sales.

Overall the first quarter of 2013 was a little below average. Sales under $2 million were supply constrained and sales over $3 million were demand constrained. Barring a huge influx of new listings all price ranges should be getting better as the contracts move to sales. This time next year buyers will be looking back wishing they had bought before prices and interest rates rose. At the lower end make sure you have your ducks in a row, over $3 million you have some real opportunities. For seller properly priced houses sell even at the higher price ranges.

GREENWICHSTREETS.COM OPEN HOUSES LIST, INTERACTIVE MAP AND PHOTOS FOR SUNDAY 4/7/13

This Sunday we have 31 open houses in all parts of the town and all price ranges.

The open house list and the interactive map are courtesy of Rob Pulitano. The hot links are courtesy of Jared Randall.

Address

Town

List Price

Time

Broker

47 Valley Rd #B1

Cos Cob

$399K

1-3 PM