One bright side to falling home prices: housing affordability has jumped nationwide to its highest level in 18 years, according to a report from the National Association of Home Builders this week.

Connecticut’s housing affordability has also increased. Just about 61 percent of new and existing-homes that sold in the Bridgeport/Stamford/Norwalk metro area were affordable to households earning the area’s median income of $101,900 during the first quarter.

Last year at the same time, only 40 percent of the new and existing-homes were affordable to people earning the area median income, according to NAHB.

Low interest rates are making housing more affordable. And the reduced prices help too.

Median home prices fell by double-digit percentages in the first quarter in dozens of Connecticut communities, including Hartford, Glastonbury, Norwich, Wallingford and Stamford, according to data from The Warren Group.

Watch for The Warren Group’s next home sales and price report which will be coming in a few days.

Mortgage loan refinancing activity has been climbing steadily for five months now.

In Connecticut, 9,857 single-family home loan refis were recorded in March. That’s up 27 percent from February when there were 7,752 refi loans.

It’s also a significant jump from last fall, when refis were hovering around the 4,000 to 5,000 range.

In fact, refi activity has more than doubled from November to March.

In contrast, purchase mortgage activity has been mostly on a downward trend since November. There was a good pick-up in activity in March, when there were 1,172 purchase mortgages for single-family homes, up from 808 in February.

Still, March’s level is half what it was in June and July.

Sales of million-dollar-plus homes and condos in Connecticut tumbled a whopping 63 percent during the first quarter compared to a year ago.

A total 102 single-family homes and condos priced $1 million or higher sold in the first three months of 2009, down from 275 in the same months last year, according to data from The Warren Group.

The priciest home to sell in the first quarter this year, a 6-bedroom, 9-bath mansion in Greenwich, fetched an eye-popping $6 million.

Not surprisingly, the most homes in this price category were sold in Greenwich (22), followed by Westport (13) and Darien (11).

It looks like more Connecticut residents are facing foreclosure this year. More lis pendens were filed statewide in the first quarter compared to a year ago.

There were a total of 7,128 lis pendens in the first three months of 2009, a 31 percent increase form the same period last year, according to The Warren Group. Lis pendens represent the first stage in the foreclosure process.

The Warren Group also tracked 1,396 foreclosures in Connecticut in the first quarter. That’s up 7.3 percent from last year’s first quarter when there were 1,301 foreclosures.

Which communities have had big jumps in foreclosures so far this year?

Norwalk’s foreclosure activity more than quadrupled, jumping from 6 to 29 in the first quarter of 2009.

In Stamford, the foreclosures increased 78 percent to 32 in the first three months of 2009 from 18 last year.  

Danbury’s foreclosures rose to 28 from 16, a 75 percent increase.

By Aglaia Pikounis

You may be surprised to see which Connecticut communities experienced steep drops in home prices during the first quarter.

The Warren Group released its latest housing report yesterday showing that the first three months of the year were pretty rough for Connecticut’s housing market.

The median selling price for homes sold in the first quarter was 17.6 percent lower, or $47,000 lower, than the median price recorded in the same period last year.

It may be no surprise that cities like New Haven, New London and Bridgeport had some of the biggest declines in median prices in the first quarter.

 In New Haven and New London, the median price plunged by more than 30 percent. Bridgeport’s median price was down nearly 28 percent year-over-year.

Those cities are also the cities most affected by foreclosures, and lender-owned property sales are putting downward pressure on prices in those areas.

But there are other communities seeing double-digit price declines besides those urban areas.

Take Glastonbury. The town’s median price fell 23.6 percent to $279,000 in the first quarter from $365,000 last year. In Norwich, the median price dropped to $150,000, a 23 percent decrease from $195,450 a year earlier.

In upscale Darien, the median home price fell under $1 million, dropping 25.5 percent to $912,500 from $1.22 million in the first quarter of 2008. And Greenwich’s home price was down 24 percent to $1.35 million from $1.78 million.

It’s important to keep in mind that these numbers reflect deals that were negotiated and finalized during the winter, a traditionally slow period for real estate sales.

It will be interesting to see whether there will be a bounce in the next quarter.