Community Corner
Greenwich Real Estate Market In $3 to 10 Million Range Takes Off
28 Open Houses scheduled Sunday, 1/13/13.
This week we have 28 open houses ranging from $449,000 to $5,495,000. You can see the interactive map here and get instructions on using all the map features here. The list of open houses for this week is below.
GREENWICH, CT REAL ESTATE MARKET REPORT
Find out what's happening in Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
I’m a visual thinker so charts and maps help me get a handle on how each price range is doing and where the sales are happening. In Greenwich, the under $1 million range was strong all year and as a very strong demand continued, the supply of homes remained low. The next price range up, the $1 – 3 million market, heated up in May and stayed busy throughout the year thereafter.
Above $3 million market at year end might look slow, but when you look at this market over the course of the year you see a more dramatic and nuanced story.
Find out what's happening in Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
NB: This is report is looked at best on a big screen/desktop, but all of the charts are also attached so you can look at each of them individually. At GreenwichStreets.com you can also toggle each pair of maps back and forth to compare where the inventory is and where the sales were in 2012.
$3 – 10 million market getting stronger; Inventory down
The chart on the left tells a dramatic story of sales that were a fraction of supply in April and May and got much better as the year went along. As previously reported we saw a big effect of the fiscal cliff with December sales setting a record for any previous December. Most of the December increase in sales was in the $3 – 10 million dollar range which is what prompted this closer look.
When you look at the months of supply in the first chart the increase in December 2012 sales doesn’t look quite as dramatic. Clearly concern about the fiscal cliff caused a steeper drop in months of supply/sales rate, but this had been getting better all year. When you look at the second chart that shows inventory each month by price range, inventory help up for the first three quarters of the year, so the drop in months of supply in this period came from an accelerating sales rate.
Inventory bumped up in September as new listings came on in the fall market and then declined for the rest of the year. So not only are sales getting better in the upper half of our market, but inventory is shrinking which will inevitably lead to more increases in prices.
$5 – 10 million 2012 Sales and Inventory in Greenwich
The Greenwich MLS, which is the source of all this data and the maps, uses red pins for sales and green pins for active listings. Personally, I’ve always thought the colors should be reversed. Anyway, if you look at the 53 red, sold pens on the first map you can see that Old Greenwich, Riverside, Mead Point, Indian Harbor, Belle Haven, and Byram Shore Road all had active sales last year. We also had a good cluster of sales in the mid-country centered around Lake Avenue and Round Hill Road just north of their intersection. Now if we just had a name for this area we could call it a hot spot, so how about Round/Lake.
$5 – 10 Million Inventory
As of today we 79 active listings in this price range well down from the 2012 high of 113 listings in March. All of the active sales area have several listings available with Belle Haven being over-represented. At the present time everyone on Byram Shore Road in this price range is staying put and we have nothing to sell there. The Round/Lake area is also pretty much sold out, but there are more listings around its perimeter.
The backcountry continues to be a tough sell. You only have to compare the red dots (sales) to the green dots (listing) to see how the market has shifted to closer to town. The fiscal cliff tax threat did get three of the seven houses sold in the last two months. The one benefit for us back country residents is more peace and quiet. The first half of the digits decade was incessant steam shovels, huge dump trucks and months of blasting. Not so much anymore.
$4 – 5 Million 2012 Home Sales and Inventory in Greenwich
In 2012, we had 28 sales reported to the GMLS and right now we have 31 listings. If you look at the first chart above this price category saw the biggest drop in 2012 months of supply as sales have increased and inventory dropped after September.
If you look at the green pins on second map we’ve got very little to sell south of the highway. Backcountry once again has more listing than sales. We also have had two more listings in this price range sell in the first 11 days of January and we have two contingent contracts in this price range.
$3 - 4 Million 2012 Home Sales and Inventory in Greenwich
We have 55 single-family homes on the market in Greenwich between $3 and $4 million. You can find them in Old Greenwich, Riverside, mid-country mostly east of Lake Avenue, and along the western and northern borders of backcountry. In this price range both back-country and mid-country have more inventory than sales all last year. What was available in the price range in Central Greenwich, Belle Haven, Indian Harbor and Mead Point has mostly sold as bargain hunters have bought up what was available.
As the buyers move up in price this inventory should come down in the first half of the year. Bonuses are down on Wall Street this year, but we only need 55 purchasers to wipe out all of this inventory. That won’t happen, but our months of supply in this price category was cut in half in 2012 and I expect to see it continue to drop after a bump up in March as the spring listings blossom. We are not that far from a market where the pricing power will shift from the buyer to the seller in this price range.
GREENWICH, CT OPEN HOUSE LIST FOR SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2013
The sun should be out for open houses today and we have a good variety to see as everyone is back from holidays. The open house list and interactive map is courtesy of Rob Pulitano and the hot links are courtesy of Jared Randall.
Address
Town
List Price
2-4 PM
Coldwell Bnkr
Greenwich
$2.995M
1-4 PM
Raveis
Cos Cob
$3.295M
1-4 PM
Coldwell Bnkr
Greenwich
$4.495M
2-4 PM
Coldwell Bnkr
Greenwich
$4.495M
1-4 PM
Prudential
Greenwich
$5.495M
2-4 PM
Coldwell Bnkr
