What do this year’s housing numbers say about sales trends?

Ido statistics every quarter. The numbers after the first six months of this year seemed very dismal. At the time, however, I predicted it was not an accurate picture of what our housing market was doing. It was based on what had happened in the past and did not accurately reflect what was currently happening.

We were experiencing an active spring market with many homes being sold with multiple offers for over the asking prices.

In the lower range, I was comfortable pushing prices higher than the numbers were indicating, while in the upper register homes were languishing much longer than we would like.

I have just completed calculating the nine-month numbers and indeed it shows rising prices in most of our markets as well as increases in the actual number of homes sold.

Bethel’s home values are up 7.1 percent with 11.9 percent more homes sold this year than the first three quarters of 2017. Brookfield values rose 4.6 percent with 5.8 percent more closings.

New Milford is up 6.7 percent with 11.8 percent more home sold year over year. Danbury was up 4.8 percent in homes sold, New Fairfield 1.3 percent, Newtown 3.8 per- cent, Southbury 10.6 percent, Redding 11.9 percent with Ridgefield even. Prices were up in every town with the exception of Woodbury, Roxbury and Sherman.

The actual numbers sold was not as encouraging. Bethel, Brookfield and New Milford saw substantial increases year over year while all of the other towns declined.

Some smaller towns like Roxbury and Sherman saw substantial decreases in the number of homes sold but these towns sell so few homes annually that a change of five to six homes will tilt the numbers. Every other town saw declines in closings year over year.

We are virtually the only state that is still below the high values of 2006. We were absolutely the last state to recover but many of these markets were already 10 percentplus over their 2006 values.

Although we are seeing increasing prices, it is dwarfed by the national recovery. In summary, I find these results promising and positive but also very disappointing when measured against other regions.