The lazy vacation month of August surprised me as much as July’s report. The number of closings rose 17% when compared to August 2006 and we had a 37% increase in sales volume too! This trend is promising as when we looked at the first half of the year we were of 11% ahead in number of closings but we had a 5% loss in sales volume when compared to the previous year's first half.

 

When I keep hearing all the negative financial news regarding wall street, mortgages, and the like, I expect to see it reflected in our local numbers. We are lucky we are in an area of the country that is not as affected as those that seem to be driving the news. Too bad good news doesn't sell papers.

 

Anyway, good news for us here on the CT shoreline and lower CT river valley. The average sales price and median price of a home actually rose in 12 of the 23 markets we serve. Westbrook, Lyme, Salem, and Chester showed the sharpest rises in average sales price at about 20% on average, largely due to sales of newly constructed homes no doubt.

 

The absorption rate, the number of months that it would take to sell all existing inventory if nothing else came onto the market, or in other words, the amount of time one can expect to be on the market to sell a home is about 7.5 months. But every listing is its own special case. For instance, re-sale homes in move-in condition in good locations and priced smartly will sell quickly. New construction can expect to take all off that time unless its extremely desirable or unique. Those homes who are price too high and/or have deferred maintenance can expect to languish.

 

All of our markets but 1 showed that sellers got between 90 to 96% of asking price. Lyme was the only notable difference where sellers got only 85% asking price. As Lyme’s average listing price is over $1M its not surprising…there’s a lot of inventory there as well.

 

We’re finding that its still pretty easy to get someone into a great mortgage. Carl Bulgini of Fenwich Mortgage in Old Saybrook told me that conforming loans are still at great rates and it seems that jumbos are starting to settle down after the shake up. He has many creative ways to save our buyers and sellers money.

 

If the Federal Reserves steps up and lowers rates as expected, you can expect to see the market do even better in our area.