More than half of Conn. home sales bring $750K, go to out-of-staters
In the pandemic boom market of 2020, New York residents snapped up 30 percent of Connecticut homes sold for $750,000 or more, according to a new study — with nearly another quarter of properties sold for that amount or more going to people moving in from other states.
Connecticut home and condo sales spiked 18 percent last year, according to a Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties analysis of Multiple Listing Service data including from Norwalkbased Smart MLS which covers most of the state.
“The dial has moved up in nearly every market throughout the entire state,” said Candace Adams, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties. “You’ll see less of a frenzy (this year) because there was some pent-up demand in the summer, however I think you are seeing ... activity that is still coming at a consistent rate out of the city. It’s flattened out — but flattened out means that they are still coming in droves.”
Agents say 2020 had already been off to a strong start when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, but cratering April sales had many in the real estate industry bracing for a down year before the beginning of the New York City exodus in May as school and office closures prompted some to reassess the suburbs, whether for getaway homes or for an outright move.
“We could see in May that there were more buyers than there were houses for them,” said Joanne Breen, an agent with ERA Sargis-Breen Real Estate in Newington who was president of the Connecticut Realtors trade group in 2020. “By August, I already could see that we were going to have a boom year. ... Usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’s pretty dead; that was not the case [last] year.”
By the end of December, 54,124 properties had changed hands, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties reported. The median Connecticut home sold for $290,000, up $40,000 or 16 percent from its equivalent in 2019, and a rebound in the state’s luxury home market helped haul the average sale price up 24 percet to nearly $450,000.
Apparel mogul Tommy Hilfiger’s Round Hill estate
in Greenwich is under contract after being listed for $47.5 million, with the town one of several to see fourth-quarter sales more than double from a year ago as tracked by Brown Harris Stevens, along with Darien, Easton, New Canaan, Ridgefield, Weston, Westport and Wilton, with Redding coming just short.
Other luxury homes have cut prices from last year, however, including Maple Hill Farm in Redding once home to the Hollywood director Barry Levinson, which is now available for $16 million, down from $19 million when it went on the market last spring.
Fairfield County led the state with a 31 percent boost in transactions last year, with Litchfield County seeing a 28 percent increase and Middlesex County up 20 percent. Sales in New Haven and Hartford counties were up 12 percent.
Fairfield County sales were up 48 percent in December from a year earlier, with new listings popping 40 percent as homeowners got an early start on the 2021 selling season. In Easton, a small house built in 1825 was listed for sale a week before Christmas for $510,000, going under contract at the asking price the day before New Year’s Eve.
“That’s a perfect microcosm of what’s going on,” said Paul Breunich, CEO of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty based in Stamford. “The wild card is, how long is it going to last? Everyone’s got an opinion on it, but our opinion is it’s going to last for the foreseeable future. We feel there’s been a diametric shift of, instead of people going from the suburbs to the metro areas, they are going from the cities back out to the suburbs based on remote learning, density concerns [and] health.”
Breunich said first-quarter sales could be “enormous” in Connecticut and other outlying markets like Westchester County, N.Y., with pending sales up more than 50 percent even as more homes come on the market.