Greenwich, CT Residential Real Estate Blog and Analysis: January 31st

Who is going to win the Super Bowl?  Coming from the West Coast would be nice to see Seattle do something, but can you really root against Manning?In the end, does it really matter as long as you have friends, family, food, drinks?  Enjoy the weekend.  

I have invested in my own MLS Search for my readers.  This will give access to a lot of the listing information I have.  Also, if I have already set you up with your personal portal, you will now be able to search your own searches outside of what I set up for you.  Feel free to test out and search properties.

From time to time I will feature a sold property to show what one can get with their money.  I felt this was a great property to feature to demonstrate the state of the market.  The above pictured 2 Roberta Lane, was listed for sale for $1.895M.  The five bedroom three and a half bath home is situated in the heart of mid country.  Halfway between the Merritt and Putnam Avenue.  The house was surrounded by reeds and has a beautiful swimming pool.  There was not a yard per say, more of a sitting area in the front of the house.  However, with that being said, it was off the market in twenty four days.  One, would have to imagine a couple of those weeks were negotiating etc.  It had multiple offers and closed for $2.15M 113% over asking.  This just shows the lack of inventory in the $2M price range, and how hot the market is.

As you will see in the charts below, January was the best January in the past five years.  We had 52 properties sell a 15% increase over the previous best January way back in 2010.  Not to mention when you couple that with the amount of new listings we see things are heating up quickly.  We had 76 new listings in January which was the least amount of new listings in the past five years.  I still foresee more inventory coming to the market.  I tend to look at the Super Bowl as the cut off date to the busy season.  Hence, I believe over the next eight weeks we will see a lot of inventory.  We definitely need it.   We still only have 478 total properties for sale.  Still down from that 656 properties in September.  I have created two new months on average charts toward the end of the newsletter for you.  I will keep my analysis for the year of 2013 up below for your review for one more week.

When we look at 2013 as a whole we can definitely see the market turn.  We sold 834 units, compared to 722 in 2012.  However, when we dig into the data we realize that it was the story of two different markets.  The under $3M market and the over $3M market.  Every price range under $3M grew.  In 2013 we sold 710 properties under $3M compared to 583 in 2012.  That is a 22% increase, which is incredible growth in one year.  However, over $3M we sold 124 units compared to 139 in 2012, which is an 11% decrease.

Obviously, this is looking at 2013 as a whole.  It is important when looking at these numbers to compare with the current market.  I believe these numbers show that last year was the market regaining it's momentum.  In the beginning of the year it was anything under $1M was flying off the shelves, in the middle of the year it was anything under $2M, and by the end of the year, under $3M was heating up.  Hence, as we look at 2014, I believe we will see two things happen.  I believe the message will get out that the market has changed and we will see an onslaught of inventory in the spring.  It will be very interesting to see if that inventory moves quickly or not.  Secondly, I believe we will see the luxury market pick up steam.  If you look below at the Market Report pay close attention to the right side which shows the difference in the past two years.  For example the over $10M properties was down 43% last year.  However, our first property over $10M did not sell until late June, so in actuality we had eight properties sell in the last five and a half months.  Plus, there are three properties currently priced over $10M that are in contract or have executed contract.  Hence, you can see that even though 2013 as a whole was tough for that market, it is definitely a stronger market now than in the first six to nine months of 2013.

There is a lack of inventory currently as properties come off of the market for the year end.  In my opinion that points to an onslaught of inventory in Spring.  If, you are looking to put your house on the market I would advise to put on before rather than later, as I feel there the philosophy of waiting until the spring market is outdated with the Internet.  The difficulty with that thought process is if everyone else is doing the same then you are competing against numerous properties.  However, if you put it between now and February you have the opportunity to differentiate yourself online as well as the Realtor Community.  As Realtors we tour houses every Tuesday and Thursday, and if there are not a lot of broker open houses your house will be seen by a lot of Realtors which obviously helps in those realtors showing your house.  Currently, we have 455 properties on the market.  When one looks at my blog from the end of September we had 656 properties, which is a 31 percent decrease in total inventory in the last couple of months. 

  Please let me know if you would like me to provide customized information or statistics for you based on your criteria.

**The information on the featured property and all statistical information is from the Greenwich MLS.

**All opinions garnered from the statistics are my own

Looking above and below you can see the year is off to a great start.  The amazing part about these numbers is every price range saw growth with the $3M-$4M moving from one sell to six in the last two weeks.  It is still early in the year, but a good sign that 14 of the 52 sales were above $3M.

Notice how small the amount of new listings is compared to previous years.  I personally do not think this will hold up, but we shall see.

In an effort to define the different markets as a good time to buy or sale I believe one needs to look at the months on average it would take to sell through the inventory we have.  Obviously, one month is not enough of a sample size, so I have created two months on average charts.  This one below is the amount of months on average to sell through our current inventory based on all of 2013 sold numbers by price range

** to calculate months on average in this chart I used year to date sold properties in each price range.

There are two individuals I feel most confident about when it comes to home mortgages.  One in Manhattan and one in Greenwich.  They are Jeff Ihrig of First Republic in Manhattan, and in Greenwich I prefer Treena David-Chirico of Wells Fargo.

Jeff can be reached at 646-372-5181.  Treena's phone number is 203-618-3923.  You can go to her website to input your specific information to receive rates.  Her website is www.wfhm.com/treena-david-chirico.