Nearing the second anniversary of the first COVID-19 vaccines, Westport continues to lead Connecticut for momentum in the pandemic real estate market, factoring in both median and average price gains from a year earlier as well as gains in how far above listing prices buyers were willing to pay.
In the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Westport became a magnet for New York City residents chasing refuges in towns, as employers allowed people to work remotely. With prices having long stagnated in Connecticut, homeowners in Westport and other towns were more than willing to take the opportunity to cash out, triggering additional sales as they looked themselves for new homes.
Westport remains among Connecticut’s hottest real estate markets in 2022, according to data from Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties. Two Westport houses sold this year at the town’s median price of $2.05 million for a 28 percent gain over the median sale from the first nine months of last year, one on Compo Beach Road and the other just off the connector leading to Sherwood Island State Park. And Westport buyers continue to bid above the listed prices for many homes, though pockets of Connecticut have seen even bigger price wars.
While Greenwich has the highest median home sale to date in 2022 — at $2.1 million up 10 percent over last year’s median-priced house — buyers are driving a harder bargain there. Transaction prices were 1.1 percent above listed prices on average in the first nine months of the year, well below the 4.4 percent bump that Westport sellers enjoyed.
In nine towns, sellers have gotten at least 5 percent more than the latest listing price they offered. In Connecticut’s “Quiet Corner”, Eastford led the state with offers there coming in 8.6 percent above what sellers had requested, across roughly 30 sales in the town of about 1,800 people. Simsbury sellers got 7.8 percent more than their asking prices, with Bloomfield and Lebanon at about 6 percent above full asking price, and West Hartford and Wilton a tick below.
Cornwall had the biggest improvement on that front from a year earlier — but with sellers still accepting a slight discount on their asking prices to get a deal in place. That was the case throughout much of Litchfield County, which had 12 of the bottom 14 towns for transaction prices coming in below what sellers had sought.
Berkshire Hathaway recorded the single largest increase in median sale prices in Sharon, near the northwestern corner of Litchfield County. This year’s entry sold for $860,000, slightly more than double the price of the median home sold through the first nine months of 2021.
Despite eight Litchfield County municipalities landing in the top 20 statewide for gains in median home prices on a year-over-year basis, the region still trailed New Haven and Hartford counties on that measure when factoring in all towns.
In the southwestern corner of the state, New London’s real estate market had the best improvement among cities with populations above 25,000 people, with double-digit percentage increases in median and average home sale prices, and transactions averaging 2.5 percent above listed prices.
And while not correlating directly with prices, just north up the Thames River valley Bozrah had one of the tightest windows for home purchases statewide this year, with houses on the market for just 15 days on average before landing an offer that resulted in a sale. While Rocky Hill and Windsor Locks beat that by a day or two respectively, Bozrah had a far bigger improvement from 2021, along with Avon which also saw houses sell within 15 days on average.
Alex.Soule@scni.com; @casoulman
