Greenwich Real Estate Market Late August 2022 Report - Sales Holding Up as Inventory Isn't - 08/28/2022

Greenwich Real Estate Market Late August Report

The last full week of August is wonderful week to be in Greenwich, because so many people aren’t here. Would you like a parking space on Greenwich Avenue in front of your favorite store? You’ve got a good chance it’s there. Want to try out a popular restaurant? Reservations are available. Have a favorite audio book you’ve wanted to listen to on the library’s Libby app? Unfortunately, your neighbors that are away, checked it out to listen to in the car on their way to their vacation spot. Greenwich Point beaches and parking have lots of room as do the tennis courts, golf courses, and restaurants this week.

If you’ve been reading the real estate news, you’d swear that things aren’t going well, but in Greenwich there is good news, though not further improving good news. Let’s take look at the good fundamentals before we parse the downer information that so many articles have focused on.

Year to date our 404 single family home sales are up 9.0% from our 10-year pre-Covid average of 371 sales as of the end of July. In August we have had another 60 house sales so far for a total of 464 houses sales this year. If you look at the numbers that Cesar Rabellino did in his report elsewhere in this section, you’ll see twice the number of sales as listings.

Our median price for the year is median price YTD as of the end of July 2021 is $2,365,000 an increase of 6% over July 2021 and an increase of 34% over July 2019. This price rise is driven by basic supply and demand. For the last two months, inventory has been essentially flat with around 208 listings. This week we are down a little bit to 202 house listings.  For comparison in July of 2019, we had 640 listings or more than triple the number of listings that we have now.

Why all the sturm und drang over the housing market or is Greenwich just an exception to falling sales. Much of this noise is attributable to the standard year over year comparisons so common in the marketplace. Last year, 2021, was by far the biggest year ever in Greenwich real estate and for just about everywhere else in the U.S. Comparing this year to last year is like comparing Frank Sinatra’s singing career to Frank Sinatra, Jr.’s singing career. Sales just don’t look nearly as good. However, inventory is even lower this year than last year.

Lower inventory is the main cause of lower sales this year. This is not to say that the Fed’s rate hikes has not damped some demand, but if we had more inventory, we’d have more sales. How do we know this? Of the 60 sales we have had in August 2022, 39 of them had been on the market for less a month. Of the 60 sales so far in August, 41 sold for full list over list. Of those 41 sales 14 of them went for more than 10% over list. Buyers are still snapping up good properties in only days or weeks and most of the time they are paying full list or over list.

But sales are down, limited new inventory has led to not only dropping sales, but also rapidly dropping contracts. We went from 154 contracts in the second half of May to only 89 contracts presently. This is a seasonal pattern that happens every year, with contracts peaking in May and dropping for the rest of the year, but this year we have dropped 42% from our high in May.

In summary, demand has slowed, but for the amount of inventory that we have sales have done remarkably well. Houses that come on well-priced more quickly. At the same time, half of our market has been on for more than 3 months. Of those that have been on for more than 3 months, half of those houses are listed for over $5 million. The high-end is the on part of our market that is slow.

Our market is slower, but it is still an excellent time to list your house, provided you price it to today’s prices.

Stay tuned ….