The Hartford area’s housing affordability rose in August from a year earlier, at the expense of sellers, a local Realtors group says.
Greater Hartford’s inventory of unsold single-family dwellings climbed 13.5 percent last month to 6,525 units from 5,749 units in August 2009, the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors said in its latest survey.
At the same time, home sales plummeted 23 percent to 646 units closed in August from 839 in August last year, the group said.
Pending home sales – in which the buyer has a sales contract but the deal has not yet closed – also dropped 26 percent to 700 last month from 948 a year ago.
Meantime, 1,443 new listings were added in August, up 3.4 percent from 1,396 in August 2009.
Unsold houses also lengthened their stay on the market to an average 73 days, one week longer than last year.
Topping it all, median price for houses that did sell fell 5 percent to $240,000 from $252,000 a year earlier, an improvement in housing affordability for prospective buyers.
The inventory-sales story was pretty much the same for Hartford area condominium market, except that median condo sales prices rose 10 percent to $176,250, the Realtors association said.
“Considering the state of our economy, home values in the greater Hartford market have been relatively stable,” association CEO Jeff Arakelian said.
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