4 CT towns among Zillow’s ‘most popular markets’ in 2023

The real estate market in and around Connecticut’s capital city is apparently heating up fast.

Zillow, the online real estate site, ranked three Hartfordarea towns this week in its national top 10 listing of 2023’s “most popular markets” based on page-view traffic, home-value growth and days on market. Wethersfield, West Hartford, and Newington made the top 10 among 2,000 communities, along with the city of Middletown.

The Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford area was also named the No. 1 housing market in the U.S. for 2023 by Realtor.com in January. The site also named Southington the second-hottest ZIP code for house hunters in the nation in September.

Bill Arzt and his fellow Hartford-area

real estate agents are feeling extra festive this holiday season, hoping that a sevenweek-long downward trend on mortgage interest rates continues and translates into a promising 2024 for home buyers.

“We’re really expecting rates to come down … if they can get down in the low sixes, I think we’re going to see a lot of positive movement,” said Arzt, the outgoing president of the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors.

Even as high mortgage rates have slowed activity in Greater Hartford’s housing market, the cost of homes continues to climb, with the median sales price in November rising 13.1 percent, from $325,000 to $367,500 compared to last year, according to Greater Hartford Association of Realtors data.

Homes for sale also spent less time on the market: An average of 21 days in November 2023 compared to 26 days a year earlier, a drop of 19.2 percent.

In a sign of the impact of high mortgage rates, the inventory of for-sale homes in Greater Hartford dropped 25 percent year over year, from 880 to 660, according to new data.

“The limited amount of homes for sale continues to be an issue for buyers,” Holly Callanan, CEO of the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors, said.

Stats from the local group mirror national assessments of Hartford’s housing market, which has been consistently ranked among the hottest in the U.S. in recent surveys.

Although the suburbs continue to lead in volume and price increases, the city of Hartford is also seeing growing sales activity and is expected to be a hotspot for real estate transactions in 2024, Arzt said.

Arzt’s company, Californiabased Realty ONE Group, opened an office this year in

Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood with expectations of new business in the area.

“It’s a nice location that’s surrounded by a strong market,” Arzt said.

“Hartford as a whole has so much to offer,” Arzt added, praising city efforts to promote homeownership.

The city of Hartford is also a hotspot for first-time homebuyers, who are expected to benefit from lower interest rates even as income requirements for mortgages have soared. Nonprofits like the Hartford Foundation have launched new mortgage assistance programs that should help stimulate demand, Arzt said.

“Where we’re going to see the most improvement next year is that level of first-time buying,” Arzt said. “They’re going to have a better opportunity to hopefully get the house of their dreams.”

For the Intelligencer/Andy Dean - stock.adobe.com High mortgage rates and still-rising home prices were blamed for the jump in the amount of income needed to buy a home in the Hartford and Bridgeport areas.