Home Sale Surge In CT Is Third Tops In Country

CONNECTICUT — If 2020 has been a miserable year for you so far, you're probably not a Connecticut realtor.

A new report released this week from real estate behemoth RE/MAX Holdings, Inc. ranks the Hartford Metro Area, which includes parts of Middlesex, Hartford, and Tolland Counties, third in terms of home sales nationwide. Realtors in the state enjoyed a 33.3 percent boost in sales closed last month, outpacing the nationwide home splurge by over 12 percent.

Gov. Ned Lamont did a victory lap with local officials in Newtown on Friday.

"The moving vans are turning around," Lamont said. "People are rediscovering the Connecticut lifestyle."

Joann Breen, the outgoing president of the Connecticut Realtors Association, said her membership had 10,000 transactions pending at the start of the pandemic. She thanked Lamont for naming her industry an "essential" business and allowing them to complete those transactions, and the thousands more that swiftly followed.

It has been the busiest year the Connecticut real estate market has seen in 12 years, Breen said, and the new data from RE/MAX backed her up. Homes are being sold in an average of 39 days — seven days faster on average than a year ago.

And the buyers are making better than fair scratch on their deals. The median sale price of a home in the Hartford metro area rose nearly 15 percent in September to $255,000. That same home just a 12 months earlier would go for $222,000, according to RE/MAX.

Breen said there has been a "modest" increase in resale value overall throughout the state, and recommended that buyers all have their finances ready to trigger when they go house-hunting. The scene in Connecticut has become highly competitive.

Lamont said that "90 percent of the economy is back," and that Connecticut was enjoying an influx of families in part due to how COVID-19 is savaging the reopening plans of neighboring states' schools.

"They're shut down in Boston. They're closing down in New York," Lamont said.

"Demand is off the charts right now," said Adam Contos, RE/MAX CEO, in the introduction to hi s report. "Buyers of all ages are coming into the market determined to improve their quality of life through amenities, community and the unique security that comes with homeownership. They're working through the challenges of tight inventory, high prices and competing offers to take advantage of historically low interest rates and, in many cases, the greater mobility they now enjoy through working remote."