GOOD Morning Wilton welcomes Lisa Bender, a realtor with the Wilton office of William Raveis, as a contributor. She’ll be writing about the Wilton real estate market.
Summer is here, Wilton looks beautiful and just about everything has curb appeal. So, why the long faces thinking about Wilton real estate? There’s been a general buzz about the real estate market here, but it hasn’t been buzz worthy at all, actually.
There is good news: Wilton has had more home sales in the three months ending May 2016 than one year ago. That’s right, sales were up nearly 20-percent over last year, May 2015—there were 55 single-family sales as opposed to 46 in the same period in 2015. Wilton also seemed hotter than Fairfield County in general during the same 3-month time comparison—county-wide, sales were only up 8-percent year-to-year.
On the flip side, however, inventory is also way up—it’s 21-percent higher for the three months ending May 2016 compared to 2015. There were 250 single-family homes for sale during 2016, versus 207 in 2015. In realtor parlance, there’s 14 months of supply this year vs. 11 months of supply in 2015.
“Months of Supply” is a basic term used to describe how long it would take for the current number of listings to be depleted. So, if the current number of home sales were 10 a month and there were 50 houses in inventory, the months of supply would be five.
Here are some other important facts and figures for May 2016:
- There were 19 single-family home sales.
- The median house price was $840,000. This is up 5.1-percent from $799,000 in May 2015. The three-month median price of $870,000 was up just slightly from $835,000 in April.
- New listings are up 30.6-percent to 64.
- The price per square foot was $287, up from $267 in April and $285 in May 2015.
- “Days on market” of 90 was way down from 169 in April, and down somewhat from 130 in May 2015. The current number is the lowest the days on market index has been since February 2015.
There have also been some interesting things to observe about pricing:
- Five homes sold over $1.5 million in the four weeks between the end of April and May, the highest being a full-priced sale at $3 million.
- We are seeing quite a few price reductions as sellers try to capture the attention of the serious buyers out there.
- Sales seem to be the most brisk at the under $900,000 mark, with about two-thirds of them at that price point.