06/14/11 Greenwich Real Estate with Scott Elwell - May 2011 - GreenwichCT.com

As we enter the summer months, the spring market numbers are starting to show. The 2011 spring real estate market in Greenwich was fairly impressive. From a realtor’s perspective (without looking at the numbers) houses that were well priced moved fast. This is still the case today. I can’t say that inventory has dropped, since it hasn’t, but I can say that well priced homes are attracting a ton of interest and move extremely quickly. Over the past month I can think of at least 10 houses that went into contract within a week of hitting the market. In May we had 55 sales, which is nearly 40% higher than May 2010. If my calculations are right, come June and July we will see an even higher change over last year. You see, these sales numbers lag about 45 to 60 days from the activity in the market since it takes that long to close a house. I’ve been looking for good numbers showing houses going into contract, but can’t find any. The Greenwich MLS changed categories to now include houses that are in executed contracts, contingent contracts and have accepted offers, but continue to show. Due to all of these categories, the numbers showing houses now in contract are all over the place. One area that we haven’t spent much time talking about in the past few months is the Sales to List Price Ratio. This number represents where a house trades in respect to its asking price. If you are looking at a large group of houses (say a couple hundred) I think this can be a fairly telling data point. That being said, for small groups of sales, this number can be fairly deceiving as one sale can have a fairly significant affect. With that thought I am going to ignore the ratio numbers in the one-month comparison, but focus on the numbers in the year to date comparison. As you can see we have dropped from a 92.3% sales to list price last year to 91.2%. This one percent drop can mean a lot of things. It could mean that people are now willing to take less for their house, or that they are in fact pricing the houses higher and taking the same amount. All in all, a 1.2% variance is not that significant and should not warrant much concern. I like talking about this number since it can be read so many different ways. Residential real estate is not an exact science and just like macroeconomics people with fairly different opinions can all be right. It is my belief that the sellers market is starting to come around to seeing what their houses are really worth. In addition, they realize that the spring market (especially in a family neighborhood where the school year is so important) may be the hottest time to sell their house for a little while. This has nothing to do with the market getting worse or better it just has to do with the cyclical nature of real estate in Greenwich. If you are selling a family home, chances are that family will want to be moving during a time when school is not in session. As usual, I’m here if anyone wants to talk more about the market. I’m always looking for more clients and appreciate referrals immensely. Sincerely, Scott Scott P. Elwell Founder/Real Estate Agent - GreenwichCT.com Al Filippone Associates @ William Raveis 45 Field Point Road, Greenwich, CT 06830 Cell: 203.940.0444 scott@elwell.com MY LISTINGS follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend