Some Conn. Towns Post Big First Quarter Home Price Declines
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.