March Home Sales in Greenwich Improving; 30 Open Houses on St. Patrick's Day

Mid-Market sales are picking up as the low end of the market remains tight and inventory slowly grows.

Posted by Mark Pruner, March 17, 2013 at 09:53 am

The first glimmers of spring are here as the snowdrops are starting to bloom and the peepers are calling shrilly from the vernal pools on the warmer nights. Sales and contracts in higher priced ranges are also starting to warm up. From $2 – 5 million we have had a total of 31 transactions; 5 sales and 26 contracts and accepted offers. Under $1 million we only have 13 transactions; 3 sales and 10 contracts and accepted offers so far this month.

This end of the market is getting severely supplied constrained for three reasons—buyers see mortgage rates rising, buyers also see house prices going up and sellers are not listing enough houses to meet this demand.

March Sales, Contracts, New Listing & Inventory by Price through 3/15

< $1MM

$ 1 - 2 MM

$ 2 - 5 MM

> $ 5 MM

Totals

Solds

Executed Contracts

Accepted Offers/Cont. Contracts

Totals

New

Inventory

460

This increase in the upper end sales and contracts are concentrated in Old Greenwich and Riverside south of the Post Road. We also have a fairly even scattering of sales and contracts in mid-country from east to west. The buyers seem to be waiting on warmer weather to venture north of the Merritt Parkway. We do have two “backcountry” sales, but both are close to the Merritt in the southwest. (BTW: These maps are easier to see at GreenwichStreets.com where you can do a slideshow of them. There you can also click on them for even larger versions.

When you look at all sales so far this month there seems to be a slight bias for mid-country, but add in the accepted offers, contingent contracts and executed contracts and you see activity across mid-country from east to west.

Inventory is doing a little better as we have 54 new single-family listings so far this month with 44 of them being between $1 and $5 million. We could use more of the lower end listings and we have plenty at the highest prices.

Eight of the new listings are in the northern part of backcountry. Now I’ve been predicting that this is the year that backcountry will make a strong comeback. Right now this area presents some real buying opportunities, but we haven’t seen flock of buyers looking in the four-acre zone. Add in a little more warm weather and I think you will. We certainly have more than our share of listing queens in the backcountry, but we also have some reasonably priced houses particularly if you look at their prices only a few years ago.

So far we haven’t seen new listings keeping up with sales activity in the hot areas. While it is only mid-March sellers are not listing properties as fast as buyers are making offers in many of the price ranges. I’ve actually developed a list of agents I deal with in other towns as buyers are looking elsewhere when they can’t find what they are looking for in Greenwich.

GREENWICHSTREETS.COM OPEN HOUSES LIST, INTERACTIVE MAP AND PHOTOS FOR ST PATRICK’S DAY SUNDAY 3/18/13

This Sunday we have 30 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.

122 Old Church Road – Backyard

5 Wellington Place

20 Meadow Road - Riverside

201 River Road #201

516 Round Hill Road

Address

Town

List Price

Open House Time