Housing Market Slump Largely Spares Connecticut

The nationwide housing slump has sales plummeting in some cities and median home prices dropping month by month. But, the Hartford Courant reports, the Connecticut housing market seems to be bucking at least part of that trend.

In June, even as the number of sales dropped in the state, the median sales price of a single-family home rose, by one measure, above $300,000 for the time.

That has caused many of the state’s homeowners to look at the value of their homes and try to reconcile that with the news of a housing recession.

How can sales be falling and prices rising?

And, they might ask, just how much is my home worth today compared to a year ago? The answers, Connecticut mortgage seekers find, are complex.

“Connecticut is doing a bit better than the U.S. as a whole,” said Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors in Washington, D.C., which tracks single-family sales in metropolitan areas.

But whether an individual house in Connecticut is worth more today, and what kind of mortgage you can expect to get for it, depends entirely on location.

“There are neighborhoods that are still seeing strong gains, while others are down,” he said. “So it’s neighborhood-specific.”

In Manchester, Conn., sales of single-family houses dropped 7.87 percent in the first half of the year compared to the first six months of 2006, from 267 to 246.

But the median sales price rose slightly during the same time frame, from $215,000 to $219,950.

In Simsbury, Conn., it was the opposite. Sales increased 9.79 percent, from 143 in 2006 to 157 in 2007. But median sales prices dropped 4.11 percent during the same period, from $365,000 to $350,000.

Connecticut real estate agents said demand for moderately priced houses in Manchester still is strong, causing prices to rise slightly.

In Simsbury, there is also demand, but it’s being fueled by buyers who are capitalizing on the large supply of houses for sale and negotiating prices downward.

Agents and local housing experts agree that, for the most part, your house is worth about the same today as it was a year ago, when mortgage rates were about the same, but demand started to peter out.

That’s not true, however, if your house is in an undesirable location such as on a busy street, or needs tens of thousands of dollars worth of updating in key areas such as the kitchen and bathrooms.

It’s also not true if your house is in a highly desirable location and has had recent renovation - then it could be worth slightly more.

Continue reading this article by the Hartford Courant on the latest trends and news from the world of Connecticut home prices …