Well Almost All
For just about every neighborhood, and every statistic in every neighborhood, 2021 was an amazing year. We had total sales of over $3 billion and this was up 31% over what was at the time a record setting 2020. Our sales were up $718,204,338 over 2020, in increase in dollar sales that is more than most towns total sales.
What’s really remarkable about that 31% increase in sales volume is that our number of sales were up only 17%. We had 863 sales in 2020 and were up 143 sales in 2021 to 1,006 sales this year.
Townwide, 2020 was a good time to be a seller as we were up in every category, except for those categories where being down is pro-seller. Our average sales price was up 12% and our median sales price was up 11%, while our days on market were down 40% from 205 DOM in 2020 to 124 DOM in 2021, i.e., on average houses were on for almost 3 months less last year over the year before.
Scattered around the table comparing neighborhoods this year to last year there are a few stats that moved in the buyers’ direction, but nearly everyone is just statistical noise in neighborhoods with small numbers of sales. If you take out North Mianus (11 sales), Pemberwick (16 sales) and Banksville (5 sales) just about every statistic was up. The only significant exception was number of sales in backcountry, but more about that later.
When you draw a line through the sales for each neighborhood by year, it’s looks like a Ralph Cramden quote, “Too the moon, Alice.” Cos Cob, backcountry, Old Greenwich and South of the Parkway were all neighborhoods where total sales volume were up by a lot. In mid-country sales volume was up by almost a quarter billion dollars.
We are getting these big jumps in sales volume for two reasons. Our total number of sales are up, and the average price is also up. Combine those two things and get these big jumps.
When you look at the number of sales in each neighborhood, you only have one factor pushing the numbers up. In just about every neighborhood, our sales were up: by 15% in mid-country (aka South of the Parkway) and up 26% in Cos Cob our biggest gain for our larger neighborhood. Also, all our smaller neighborhoods, who have lower average prices, saw dramatic jumps in sales. Pemberwick’s sales were up 78% going from 9 sales in 2020 to 16 sales in 2021.
As mentioned above the one area that saw a drop in sales, (besides North Mianus where sales went from 13 sales to 11 sales) was backcountry. There sales fell from 102 sales in 2020 to 92 sales in 2021 or a drop of 10%. As noted above a 22% jump in average sales price per s.f. more than made up for this small drop with total sales dollars up in backcountry.
The natural thing is to think that high-end sales are dropping in backcountry, but townwide sales from $5 – 10M were up over 100%, so it’s going to take more slicing and dicing to figure out the details of what is up and down in backcountry. One thing that is definitely down is inventory dropping from 49 listings at the end of 2020 to only 37 listing at the beginning of this year.
Going forward inventory is going to determine how we do this. To be more precise, it’s not inventory, but the number of new listings. We were at record low inventory almost every week last year, but we still set a record for sales. You are looking for a new neighbor, now might be a good time to encourage your neighbor to list their house. They’ll get a good price, and you’ll get a new neighbor.
