Housing sales rise again, but so do home prices

Connecticut’s real estate market steamed into summer with another big increase in sales — but with new listings continuing to lag, resulting in prices that are putting homes out of reach for many would-be buyers.

Nearly 5,500 Connecticut homes changed hands in June, according to a preliminary count by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties. That was up 32 percent from a year ago, when a pandemic charge to the suburbs prodded many to put their properties on the market as values spiked to levels not seen since before the Great Recession.

Buyers continue to put in bids above asking prices to get a contract in place. The median Connecticut home sold for $341,000, up 22 percent from June 2020.

Fairfield County sales were up about 60 percent from June 2020 according to preliminary counts by both Berkshire Hathaway and William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty. And across nearly 40 “shoreline” towns running from Milford to Stonington and up the Connecticut River tracked by William Pitt Sotheby’s, sales were up 55 percent in June.

Hartford County sales swelled as well by nearly 30 percent, after lagging communities to the west and south earlier in the spring.

“People are migrating out of New York,” said Paul Breunich, CEO of William Pitt Sotheby’s. “For whatever reason — the pandemic, remote working, crime — it is creating demand from the city into the suburbs, and we’re the beneficiaries of it.”

William Pitt Sotheby’s reported June sales spiking more than 130 percent in Stamford where it has its main office, to nearly 240 transactions including condominiums.

Greenwich edged Stamford in sales of single-family homes, with sales topping 130 houses sold in both municipalities. Including condos, Greenwich sales were up more than 80 percent from June 2020; the town also led Connecticut for land sales in June, with eight lots landing buyers.

Even modest homes are going for seven figures there, including last week when a modest house on Arcadia Road dating back to 1900 sold for nearly $1.2 million. One big perk — its location just steps away from the Old Greenwich stop of Metro North and retailers lining Sound Beach Avenue.

In addition to Stamford, sales more than doubled as well in Norwalk, New Canaan; and heading east in Orange, North Branford, North Stonington and Mystic, which spans portions of Groton and Stonington.

Even Westport topped what was a torrid June 2020 market, with the town among the earliest targeted by high-rise dwellers in New York City hitting the escape button during the pandemic. Westport sales were up a third from June 2020, punctuated at the end of June with the $10 million sale of a West Coast-style home with sweeping views of Long Island Sound.

“It’s been an amazing increase in sales [and] the price points houses are selling for,” said Jim Marpe, Westport first selectman.

Bridgeport also saw a sizable increase at 75 percent, with nearly as many multifamily homes selling as individual houses. Sales were up by two thirds in Danbury, which was the lone Fairfield County municipality to see more condos and townhouses sell than stand-alone houses.

“There’s demand for anything,” Breunich said. “Danbury ... has a lower price point, so I think they have hit a niche of people looking to buy at that price range.”

Photos by Alexander Soule / Hearst Connecticut Media A Gray Lane home in Westport that sold for $10 million in late June, $900,000 less than what the property's prior owner sought last September but about $4.4 million more than its purchase price after it was built in 2018.

A Brown Place home in the Bell Island district of Norwalk that sold July 1 for $1.9 million.