The mark of genius in a man is the extent to which he agrees with you
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I believe most of this has been pointed out here over the past months.
Realtor David Michonski: Hot Greenwich market cooling, ”bumpy road ahead”.
One big indicator of the local slowdown is the number home sales, which are down 36 percent from this point in 2021, David Michonski, a local Realtor and analyst, told the Retired Men’s Association of Greenwich.
“That’s a big decline,” Michonski said. A drop of “3 or 4 percent would be more normal during a couple of quarters. That means the volume of sales is down.”
The Greenwich market has experienced nearly two years of strong performance — with the high number of sales partially attributed to people moving out of New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to the strong national real estate market overall.
Also, the average price of a Greenwich home is now $3.1 million, which he said is a new record, up from slightly under $3 million in 2021. The median price for a Greenwich home is up 8 percent year to date over 2021, going up from $2.3 million to $2.5 million, he said.
“You can feel really good about that, but it masks some tremendous underlying weakness” in the real estate market, Michonski said.
Those weaknesses include a decline in sales contracts in the first six months of the year in addition to the downturn in the number of sales, he said, calling it “the most foreboding of the statistics.”
“It is down a whopping 52 percent year to date,” Michonski said. “That means the third quarter and possibly the fourth quarter, which is usually one of the weakest quarters of the year, is going to be down very dramatically” when it comes to sales.
Michonski pointed to national economic trends that can have an impact on housing sales: a lower demand for mortgages; an increase in mortgage bankruptcies; and layoffs at major mortgage and real estate firms. “Recessions in real estate have a ripple effect,” he said, because fewer home sales means a downturn in remodeling work, furniture purchases, pool installations and landscaping work.
“We have a slow, bumpy road in the immediate months ahead,” Michonski said.
He found a silver lining in the Greenwich’s market, saying “Down isn’t always bad.”
“If you are a homeowner right now, if you wanted to sell your property, you’ve probably got a fantastic time. Prices are still up and the competition is down. New listings in Greenwich are down 68 percent. That’s the largest drop we’ve seen,” Michonski said.
But “many properties that had been on the market for many years were just swept up in 2021, which reduced inventory and means there’s very little competition out there,” he said.
And homes that are on the market are still moving quickly, Michonski said. Traditionally, it would take 120 to 150 days for a home to sell — and even longer during a slow market, he said. But with little available stock, he said it’s only taking an average of 91 days for a home to be sold.
“That’s remarkable that people are able to sell their homes that quickly,” Michonski said. “Don’t expect that to continue, but that is the current reality.”