This year has been different from prior years with more transactions and less inventory at the higher end and fewer sales and more inventory in the heart of our market from $1 – $3 million. The result is that our neighborhoods have seen a shift in activity levels and demand.
Greenwich Neighborhood Real Estate Activity – April 2018
South of the Parkway
The largest number of listings in the GMLS system is South of the Parkway which extends all the way from the Merritt to the Post Road (except for those parts in another neighborhood like Old Greenwich or Glenville.) I tend to think of it as a shorthand for the mid-country one and two-acre zones, but it also includes other zone. As usual this area has the most listing with 211 listings or 38% of all our listings.
This area has the highest average price of any area in town with $3.18M and the most sales with 46 sales. It also has our lowest appreciation rate when you compare the sales to the Greenwich Tax Assessor’s assessment as of October 1. 2015. The assessment ratio is 70% so if prices had not changed at all the Sales Price/Assessment ratio would 1.42 the reciprocal of .70. For this area the assessment ratio is 1.52 which is only 7% appreciation in 2.6 years, but the good news is that it is appreciation.
North of the Parkway
North of the Parkway is doing better this year, primarily because our high-end market is doing better this year. You can see this, because this area had a sale for $11,100,000 and it still only came in third. Both Riverside with a $14.5M sale and South of the Parkway with a $12,075,000 came in above the northern section of town. North of the Parkway did have nearly the highest average with $3,171,630 compared to South of the Parkway’s average of $3,180,354. These nearly identical high averages bode well for the northern half of the town. Together these two areas represent almost 2/3rds of our listings so this improvement in the higher end is good news for the town.
North of the Parkway still however has some ways to go on the sales side as the 113 houses listings there constitute 24% of all our listings, but only 7% of the sales. The good news for backcountry is that the trend is in the right direction. In fact, backcountry has the second highest appreciation SP/Assmt ratio at 2.04 or 89% appreciation, but this, like all early season numbers in this article, factors in the effect of a few anomalous sales which causes averages to swing wildly in the first half of the year. With only 10 sales, I don’t think Old Greenwich needs to worry that they will have less appreciation than backcountry by the end of the year.
Old Greenwich & Riverside
Old Greenwich and Riverside are actually pretty diverse when it comes to real estate. Prices so far this year have varied from $740,000 to the aforementioned high sale of $14,500,000. Each area is just under 9% of our inventory, while on the sales side OG is 12.5% of sales and Riverside an even more competitive 15.8% of sales, so both areas are still quite popular. As you might expect their sales price to original list price ratio is also quite high at around 93% compared to 91% for the town-wide average.
As between the two areas, you can see some of the popularity shift towards Riverside as we’ve seen the last couple of years. We have greater sales in Riverside than in Old Greenwich, 24 houses to 19 houses and a higher average price of $2.7M in Riverside compared to $2.2M in Old Greenwich. They are still premier places to live in the NY metro areas and demand exceed supplies supply which is what drives these high average sales price.
Cos Cob & Glenville
Unlike north and south of the parkway and OG and Riverside these two areas are not contiguous, but buyers who look in one area often look in the other area across town. These two areas have not reached the heady averages of OG and Riverside, but they are headed that way. Cos Cob has a higher average price at $1.71M compared to Glenville’s $1.02M, but Glenville sales have fewer days on market and a slightly higher sales price to original sales price ratio.
Both areas are smaller with limited inventory, however, when you compare the percentage of sales to the percentage of inventory town wide, the sale percentage is 3 – 4 times more than the inventory percentage. We seen more inventory in $1 – 1.5 million range this year and slightly slower sales so these ratios are down a little bit from prior years.
Summary
Compared to last year our inventory is up and so are our contracts, while our sales are about the, albeit with a shift to the higher-end. The movement of people from Westchester is also starting to build. I recently did an open house at 108 Pecksland which is on for $2.3M; we had 9 groups come through and 6 of those were from Westchester. I expect the trend of more Westchester buyers will continue, especially as the BET proposed and the RTM just approved a budget with no property tax rate increase.
The northern half is picking up, and some of the hot areas have cooled a little, but this is all relative. The one area that has had the biggest change this year is mid-country with noticeably increased interest, but value pricing is still key there and in every part of town.
