sales booming

Selling like a house afire

I’ve been reporting this for a while now, but it must really be happening if Greenwich Time says so.

A late-May surge of New York City dwellers interested in the suburbs did not result in Connecticut home sale gains for the second quarter of 2020, but real estate agencies say sales are now being completed that will swell the summer numbers as contracts are finalized.

…{S] ales currently under contract are running 30 percent higher than at last year’s levels, with banks showing continued willingness to issue mortgages, albeit with some tightening of credit terms.

“The pending [sales] are off the charts,” said Candace Adams, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties. “If you look at certain pockets of the market, they are up even more. I would say that is pent-up demand and a lot of New York migration. ... I think our spring market is going to go right through the fall.”

In its own analysis of homes under contract that had yet to close as of late June, William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty found that New York City buyers triggered roughly a third of transactions in Fairfield County and Litchfield County; and more than 40 percent of the pending closings in neighboring Westchester County, N.Y.

The market remained dormant through the third week of May, then went into overdrive, according to Paul Breunich, CEO of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, which has its main office in Stamford. He added that 20 percent to 30 percent of homes on the market are triggering multiple offers, five to six times the level of recent years.

“In 30 years, I’ve never seen a market like this — and it is because of the New York City population looking to move out,” Breunich said. “I don’t think it’s a short-term, ‘panic’ buy. I really think we went from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market ... and we went to escaping to the suburbs. Those two things happened overnight.”

Greenwich has been among the immediate beneficiaries, with June home sales up 23 percent to about 75 transactions, nudging the town into positive territory for the second quarter compared to a year ago.