The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Connecticut home prices continue to soar
Some buyers forced to rethink priorities
In some ways, broker Roxanna Bajra’s job amounts to a tale of two cities.
There’s Stamford, where home prices continue to soar, and where many commuters to jobs in Westchester County and Manhattan want to be these days.
And then there’s everything north and east of Stamford — places that her clients are suddenly forced to consider as alternatives, as they watch prices climb way above what they’re willing to pay.
“I am working with several clients right now who are coming into this realization that their dream, their sweet location, may not be where they are going to end up,” said Bajra, president of the Stamford Board of Realtors and a broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties.
Across Connecticut — but especially in lower Fairfield County, where home prices have shot up dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic — similar stories of dashed hopes, downsized expectations and creative problemsolving are playing out.
Some buyers find themselves forced to accept aspects of a property they never envisioned.
In one extreme case, Lori Elkins Ferber, a broker in the Westport office of William Pitt Sotheby’s, described a New York City couple coming out on top with an offer for an antique farmhouse in Easton — with one major add-on: that they keep a barnyard of alpacas, goats and chickens. They agreed. “Here’s my New York City buyers who have never even had a dog. It’s like Green Acres, living this [lifestyle] — and they’re very excited about it,” Ferber said. “With all these offers, agents are having to get a lot more creative about finding listings and sometimes there’s some very unusual things that are happening to actually be the person that wins that bidding war.”
In February, Stamford prices were running 23 percent above their levels of a year earlier, as calculated on a square footage basis by William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty.
Bajra can count on one hand the list of options for anyone getting squeezed by Connecticut’s heated housing market: widen your geographic search, downsize expectations when it comes to space and features, or stay put in your current home or rental unit until prices subside.
To date, there’s no general rule of thumb for how much more people will pay above their original offer, Bajra said.
“One client is now heading to Norwalk, which she does not want to do,” Bajra said. “She works in Westchester County, and that extra 20-minute drive can be a lot for her to get to work.”
Another of Bajra’s clients — a Westchester worker who was originally considering Norwalk in addition to Stamford — couldn’t find a three-bedroom, two-bath home in the right price range, and later expanded the search as far as Trumbull and Milford.
They came close to buying one property in Milford, but they couldn’t make the numbers work.
“It was the perfect size, the perfect street, the perfect parcel, but it needed work,” Bajra said. “And at the top of their price point, they can’t do the work . ... So the house went by the wayside.”
Bedrooms, baths and beyond
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on offices has been a major contributor to high demand for homes outside New York City.
Many earners now have assurances from employers that flexible working arrangements will continue even after the majority of the population gets vaccinated. That allows some home buyers to stick to budgets and lists of desired features by looking well outside the arc of the Metro-North commuter line stations and highway access points.
But for many others, whether for work or personal reasons, location still matters most.
Another of Bajra’s clients — a renter in Stamford who is now facing a lease expiration — recently elected to renew her lease for another year, as she watched homes in her price range get snapped up by above-asking-price offers. She’s now waiting to see if the 2022 market offers better options.
Besides location, buyers are reconsidering what they want in a house. Bedrooms and bath counts are still top of mind, but some clients may now take a closer look at a property’s footprint and decide whether or not it can accommodate expansion or the addition of extra rooms to fit their needs.
In its annual survey of home buyer preferences published last summer, the National Association of Realtors indicated that the pandemic caused discernible changes in buyer expectations when it comes to room counts.
Buyers submitting exorbitant bids in desirable towns are raising home prices to levels beyond the means of many, forcing them to widen their searches, according to Ferber, the Westport broker.
“Especially if you have a more [specific] home, like a mid-century modern or a vintage antique restored house, these houses are really in demand,” Ferber said, “especially by New York City buyers who seem to really love them.”
Of course, the number of those high-demand homes in any given area is small to begin with, Ferber said.
“I have clients [who] start off maybe in Westport and then they are saying, ‘Ok, let’s look at Easton, let’s look at Newtown, let’s look at Woodbury, lets look at Brookfield,’” Ferber said. “They are not as concerned about a commute. They’re telecommuting. They figure that down the road, they may not even be going back to an office.”