When you look at our monthly sales, the Greenwich real estate market looks pretty pretty normal, slightly depressed, but normal, which is why you should never look at one data point. That one data point is 28 single family home sales this January. It’s just a smidge below the 30 sales that we had in January 2023. Those 28 sales last month compare to our 10 year, pre-Covid average of 34.4 sales still not that bad, and fairly consistent with the trends that we saw in the second half of 2023, but that’s where normal ends.
To be clear, Greenwich real estate really hasn’t been normal since 2018, when we had 593 sales. After that the roller coaster ride started. In 2019, we headed for a dip with only 526 sales, then Covid came. In horrible time for the nation and particularly, New York City, people headed for space both inside and outside their homes. In 2020, our 2-acre and 4-acres zones in mid-country and backcountry, that had been on a steady downward slide since the Great Recession, recovered quickly.
The complaints of loneliness on these big lots and the expense of maintaining these large houses all of sudden seemed to promise safety with space and onsite amenities for the whole family that were home 24/7 for month after month. In 2021, our sales hit record highs with over 1,000 sales that year. Less remarked upon was that we had enough shadow inventory of homeowners that had been waiting to sell to supply the demand for all those houses.
By the second half of 2021, that shadow inventory was starting to fade from the low end and moving progressively higher. By September of 2021, we saw inventory hitting record lows week after week, but we still had enough new listings to satiate the demand that was out there. By 2022, inventory started low, and struggled to ris, but didn’t peak until September ’22, when it normally peak in April or May. The result of this year long inventory shortage was that 2022 sales, just barely made it above our pre-Covid average of 624 annual sales.
Last year, we saw more of the same with Greenwich inventory setting a new all time low nearly every month. The demand was there so with little inventory and lots of buyers, our months of supply went to all time lows, with many price ranges measured in weeks of supply. With not enough to sell, we ended up with 527, a number we hadn’t seen since 2019.
And, then things got weirder in January. January usually see’s a bump up in sales as some owners want to put off sales of their house until the next calendar year, so they can push out their capital gains payment another 15 months. We also usually don’t have much in the way of new inventory as buyers don’t like to wade through deep snow to get to the front door of the open house.
So far this year, we haven’t had much snow, but we also haven’t had many new contracts. As a result, inventory has skyrocketed on a percentage basis. At the beginning of the year, we actually had only 88 single family home listings on the Greenwich MLS. By the end of the month, our listings were up 30% to 114 listings. A 30% jump in single-family inventory has never happened in January. The last three years inventory was down in 2021, flat in 2022 and had a small rise in 2023. (Thank you to everyone who listed their houses, we really needed it.)
Rapidly, rising inventory in January even by 30% is interesting, but by itself, it’s not all the weird. What is weird is that a small number of new house listings is usually balanced by a small number of new contracts. This year not so much. So far this year, we have seen 44 new listings. Last year, we had 39 new house listings in January; so we had 5 more new listings this year. factor in 18 fewer contracts from January 1, going from 52 contracts to only 34 listings and it becomes clear why our inventory has gone up so much.
Does this mean that the hot market is over? Hardly. 114 listings is still very, very low. Also, anecdotally, out Greenwich Streets Team at Compass is still working with a bunch of buyers that are highly motivated to buy, what little there is out there and we are hearing the same from other agents. I also got 5 ISO emails in the last three days. These In Search Of emails used to be pretty uncommon, particularly, from agent who work at other brokerage. Now, they are a daily occurrence as buyer can’t find what they want amont the few listings that we have. For example, if you want a house in Old Greenwich under $2 million, you have a choice of one house. You have the same number of choices from $4.5 million to $9 million.
Our inventory is down 19% from last year and sales and contracts are down a similar 18%. The biggest drops are from $3 million to $6.5 million where we are down 24 listings. We are up 7 listings from $6.5 million to $10 million, so our high-end sales may be able to continue at near record levels, however, much of our high-end and ultra-high end shadow inventory is probably gone.
Inventory is heading the right way, but it’s got a long way to go as does 2024. One weird month doesn’t make for a weird year, but it’s a start.
Mark Pruner is a sales executive with Compass Connecticut and a principal there in the Greenwich Streets Team. He can be reached at 203-817-2871 or mark.pruner@compass.com.
