Home sales take a hit in New London County
(New London-WTNH) _ Is the well publicized housing boom of a few years ago going bust in Southeastern Connecticut? The latest report shows housing sales have taken the hardest hit in New London County.
Drive through most any neighborhood in New London County and you see 'For Sale' signs. Lots of them.
Camille Taylor's real estate company is in Mystic where she says the housing boom has not gone bust, but there have been changes.
"We're still very robust," Taylor said. "It's been longer and longer for a home to sell."
According to the Warren Group, housing sales in New London County dropped nearly twenty percent in December. Things usually slow down during the holidays, but there may be other reasons as well.
"Because interest rates are still very strong we still have a lot of buyers out there looking," Taylor said. "They just seem to be a little more cautious and taking their time making a decision."
Taylor says word of a slump in the housing market has buyers hoping for a deal.
This slow down in sales does not necessarily mean buyers are going to see any great bargains. Realtors say sellers are more likely to maybe switch realtors or even take their properties off the market rather than drastically drop their price.
For the most part prices have pretty much leveled off. In December they did dip a little. The median price for a single family home in New London County was $240,000, down from $245,900 the previous December. But for 2006 as a whole prices rose an average 3.3 percent to $250,000.
"The real estate values are really holding their own," Taylor said. "They're normalizing, which means when you're going from a hot market to a little bit of a cooler market you're going to see that change."
Taylor says the market now is basically what it was back in 2003, but if you remember, 2003 was a record breaking year for sales.
While the sale of single family homes dropped last year home prices have gone up. New Haven County lead the state with prices increasing by more than nine percent.
In Hartford County, prices crept up two and half percent while sales dropped more than nine percent. Condo sales fell nearly seven percent. Tolland County's sales also decreased by eight percent. In Middlesex County sales fell by more than 11 percent.
Link to story: http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=6115490 |