New Study Ranks North Haven Among the Best in Connecticut for Healthiest Housing Markets

A new study from SmartAsset ranked the healthiest housing markets in Connecticut and North Haven is No. 4 on their list.

The towns and cities on the list secured their ranking due to the relatively low number of days a home is on the market, the higher than average number of years residents live in homes, and the low number of homes sold at a loss.

Darien was ranked No. 1, followed by West Hartford, Wethersfield, North Haven and Newington to round out the top five.

SmartAsset used the following methodology to determine its rankings:

A healthy housing market is both stable and affordable; homeowners in a healthy market should be able to easily sell their homes, with a low risk of losing money over the long run. So, in order to find the healthiest housing markets in the country, we considered the following four factors: stability, affordability, fluidity and risk of loss.

We measured stability with two equally weighted indicators: the number of years people remain in their homes and the percentage of homeowners with negative equity (as homeowners with negative equity are more likely to go into foreclosure). To account for our second factor, risk, we used the percentage of homes sold at a loss. To determine housing market fluidity, we looked at data on the average time a for-sale home in each area spends on the market—the longer it takes to sell, the less fluid the market. Finally, we calculated affordability as the monthly cost of owning a home as a percentage of household income in each county and city.

Affordability accounted for 40% of the housing health index, while each of the other three factors accounted for 20%. When data on the above four factors was unavailable for cities, we excluded these from our final rankings of healthiest markets.

Darien scored at the top with a 61.60 Healthiest Market Index score, West Hartford was next at 57.50, followed by Wethersfield (48.80), North Haven (47.50) and Newington (46.70).

Read more about the rankings and the study at SmartAsset here.

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