via CT Insider

By Alexander Soule | Published on December 7, 2022

After two-thirds of New Haven County cities and towns generated sufficient numbers of new home listings to replace those sold in the third quarter, the market remained balanced into December, signaling a break in the high prices that have thwarted many Connecticut buyers during the pandemic real estate market.

William Pitt Sotheby's International Realty noted a slight increase in November for new listings of single-family homes in New Haven County compared to November 2021 in an analysis of select markets in Connecticut.

New Haven County also stood out in a third-quarter report of real estate markets statewide by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties, with new listings easily outstripping sales. By comparison, just six Fairfield County markets had higher numbers of new listings than sales in the third quarter, though Stamford and Greenwich were in the group as two key markets.

Statewide about 3,150 houses and condominiums sold in November, down 24 percent from a year ago. For the third quarter, the decline was 19 percent statewide. 

Any sustained stretch of increasing inventory should help ease prices for buyers, giving them options if the house of their choosing is priced too high, and so forcing sellers to cut their prices. Many sellers have been doing just that in the last half of 2022, as rising mortgage rates have cut into the prices home buyers can afford. 

Buyers continued to pay slightly above asking prices on average in November, as calculated by Berkshire Hathaway, but not at the level they were in the third quarter, and with some of those homeowners having listed their properties again at lower prices to draw more buyers to open houses.

Over the first 11 months of 2022, the average sale price in Connecticut was $9,500 higher than the average listing price for a 1.8 percent premium for buyers. But in November alone, that average sale and listing price gap was down to $400, and the median home sold in Connecticut went for roughly the same as the median listing, at $340,000. 

Just over 400 more homes were sold in November compared to the number of listings hitting the market, an expected trend as some buyers and sellers put real estate on hold for the holidays. But in New Haven County, the differential was far tighter, with only 10 more homes sold than the 506 new listings to hit the market.

Berkshire Hathaway releases sales and listing data at the municipal level quarterly. In the third quarter, cities and towns that saw more new listings than sales included New Haven, Waterbury, Branford, East Haven, Guilford, Hamden, Madison, Meriden, Milford, Naugatuck, Southbury and West Haven. In the group of locales with at least 100 listings during the quarter, only Cheshire and Wallingford saw more transactions close than new listings that hit the market.