Connecticut Real Estate News
Torrington Connecticut Real Estate Analysis
With all the hype in the media over the current real estate crisis, we felt it was time to study how this reflects on the Torrington market. The results are interesting and if not positive, certainly not as dire as many areas of the Country.
To find out what has been occurring in Torrington data from the Connecticut Multiple Listing Service was utilized. Although not all sales use this service, the majority of arms length transactions due go through this process. The use of the MLS also weeds out family transactions and auctions sales which would tend to skew market value indicators due to the nature of these transfers.
FannieMae has developed an analysis for appraisers to use to give a view of the market for a specific property. The idea is to see how prices have changed over the past year, what is happening with absorption rates and for houses currently for sale. Although it often results in to limited statistical information when targeting an individual property type within a neighborhood, it can be very helpful in determining what is happening with a town overall. When the sales market in Torrington over the last year was analyzed we can see current trends.
Firstly sales are still showing some decline in numbers. The first 6 months showed 130 sales. that total went down some for the 3 months period after that with 55 sales. Keep in mind that the first figure used is for a 6 month period versus the second which is half that, so that would correlate to 110 sales over a six month period. Another consideration is that this three month period includes three of the slowest months of the year. That figure grew to 60 sales for the last three month period. So there has been a decline in sales of 8% from the first six months.
While the number of sales have declined slightly, the absorption rate (time it would take for all current sales on market to sell at the current sales rate) has increased to 16 months from 11.6. This is more a reflection of and increase in the number of listings which grew from 251 to 319.
Prices are still showing a downward trend albeit much lower then earlier. the sales in the last 3 months had a median sales price of $158,750 down from $163,250 for the first six months. This is a decline of less then 3% and is an indication that the downward swing is leveling off.
Marketing time for sales was stable with the most recent average marketing time being 57 days while it was 56 days in the first six months of the one year cycle. Some caution should be given to these figures as they do not reflect prior listings that have expired and relisted, and only reflect their current listings marketing time. On market properties days on the market have shown increase from 74 days to 88, which would be expected considering the increase in listings.
The percentage of sales price to listing price has actually increased from 96.29% to 97.16%. This appears to be an indication that well priced properties are still moving while those that are over priced are not. The fact that there is less then a 3% difference between asking price and sales price strongly suggests that well priced properties are selling and close to their asking price while other properties are not moving at all.