by Mark Pruner
The demise of backcountry real estate has been greatly exaggerated. Sales in backcountry are actually up over last year. As of 9/15 we have had 42 houses sell in the backcountry compared to only 38 houses last year at this time.
The idea that sales in backcountry are doing poorly may arise from the idea of “backcountry” as just another way of saying high end properties, but it’s not. From $4 – 5M only 25% of the listings are in the backcountry, even over $10M less than half of our listings are in the backcountry. So when you are talking high-end the properties are all over town.
Now, I should fess up I live in the backcountry. We have two big dogs, a cat and a chicken on ten acres. We can’t see our neighbors and we love living here. We don’t think it’s a hassle to drive an extra five minutes to get to town and I have plenty of company in my fellow backcountry residents and in many prospective buyers.
We are not seeing a wholesale abandonment by backcountry residents. We just hit the heart of the fall market and have 129 backcountry listings on the GMLS. Last year in August of 2014 we had 138 listings so sales are up slightly and listings are down slightly in the backcountry indicating a marginally tighter market.
The GMLS actually uses the term “North of Parkway” which may be a better way to think of this area. The back country is not only high-end, big-acreage properties on Round Hill Road; it includes the properties north of the Merritt on King Street, the houses near the Griffith E. Harris golf course and an amazing number of properties under 4 acres created prior to the zoning laws coming into effect. The numbers so far this year look like this:
The backcountry inventory of 129 listings represents 24% of our 528 listings on the Greenwich MLS. Of the 129 listings, 72 listings are under $5M and 57 are over $5M. As with the rest of Greenwich, the market from $1 – 2M is very busy in the backcountry.
The idea that no one is buying in the backcountry because it’s just too far away from town just isn’t accurate. Forty-two families have bought in the backcountry and another 13 have signed contracts to buy there for a total of 55 backcountry transactions so far this year. As David Ayres of Sotheby’s pointed out year-to-date, 42 sales (9.4% of 449 sales this year) and $123.8 million (11.8% of the $1,052.8 million of total sales) have occurred north of the Parkway.
If you annualize our 42 sales for the year so far, you come with an expected 60 sales for the year. To get to that number we only need 5 more contracts this year. The total sales volume for these 60 sales is likely to be in excess of $177,000,000 which is quite an investment by people in backcountry Greenwich.
Now, the idea that post-recession many people want to live closer to town, on smaller lots in sight of their neighbors is true, but the idea that practically no one wants to live in the back country is just wrong. We will have the same or more sales in the backcountry this year as we did in boom years 2006 and 2007.
So why is there this feeling that buyers are abandoning the backcountry? The reason is that the backcountry does have most of the ultra-high end properties and these properties get the disproportionate share of the attention of the press, homeowners, buyers and realtors. What we have is a mismatch between inventory and sales at the ultra-high end, but this is not a problem of the back country, it is a problem throughout Greenwich.
Up to $2M the percentage of solds is greater than the same price ranges percentage of inventory. For $2M and above the percentage of inventory sold is less than the active percentage for each price range above that amount. The starkest example of this is the over $10M range where 19% of the listings in the backcountry are over $10M and we have yet to have a sale in the backcountry for over $10M. Now this is not good, but the whole town has had only 5 properties sell for over $10M this year.
We had some remarkable sales in the backcountry including Lyn Stevens listing for $5.5M at 409 Round Hill Rd that had four competing bidders and went for over list price. We also had 179 Bedford Road which just closed for $8,145,000 after two years on the market. Per the listing agent, Marijane Bates Hvolbeck the buyer only wanted a backcountry property.
As I mentioned previously, high end properties are selling later in the year with 179 Bedford as a prime example. Another example is 16 Andrews Farm Road which Bill Andruss just sold for $5.25M on September 9th. We have 3 properties that sold this week and another 10 backcountry properties waiting to close.
High-end properties in the back country are a challenge, but many of the price ranges are doing better, a case in point, we have had 9 properties sale between $5 and $10M in the backcountry so far this year. Last year we had only 2 for the entire year.
Backcountry is doing better than last year. Admittedly there are more people wanting to live closer to town than before the recession and some buyers that see larger acreages as an extra expense which outweighs the privacy, but we do have the buyers for backcountry. We live in the New York metro area with millions of people that would love to live in Greenwich if they could afford it.
Below $3M and particularly, below $2M backcountry is active to very active. Above that price what we need are more buyers at the high end throughout the town. When I sold 26 Wooddale in mid-country for $7.8M it was only the fifth properties to sell between $7.5 and $10M this year. So backcountry is slower than the rest of the town when looked at from a distance; up close it all depends on the price, the property, and the motivations of buyers and sellers. Yes it’s a tougher sell for many properties north of the Merritt, but thousands of people love it there and buyers will buy and are buying at the right price.
