By Mark Pruner
Sentinel Dashboard Editor
January 2017 was an excellent month for sales in Greenwich. The really promising thing about it is that sales from $1 million all the way up to $5 million increased significantly compared to January 2016.
Last month we had 42 single-family home sales in Greenwich and 33 of those 42 homes were between 1 million and $4 million. The segment from $1-1.5 million was particularly outstanding with 12 sales, up from only two sales in January 2016. The even better news for that price range is that we have 16 contracts that have been signed waiting to close.
When you look at contracts in all price ranges, the other area that jumps out at you is the $2-3 million price range where we have 18 contracts that have been signed. This is 11 more contracts than we had in January of last year. Sales in the $2-3 million price range will continue to be busy in February 2017, which has traditionally been our month with the lowest sales for the year.
Our January sales showed strong sales from $2 million all the way up to $5 million. We had 15 sales in this price range this January compared to only 6 last January. We may actually be seeing a little evidence of a Trump Bump here as this is the second consecutive month with better high end sales and contracts.
Our total inventory is down to 447 houses which is 13 lower than last year at this time, while total sales are up 16. In fact, every aggregate category; whether inventory, contracts, sales, or months of supply are moving in a pro-seller direction.
Curiously, the one exception is the market under $800,000. In that price range our inventory is up 8 houses from last year while total sales and contracts are down 11 from last year. While these numbers aren’t large, they have a big impact in a market with only 27 houses in inventory. This price segment always has low inventory so this is probably only a temporary anomaly.
The other big change can be seen when you look at where in town the sales are happening. We are seeing relatively good sales and contracts in the back country and also in the eastern half of mid-country. When you look at the map of sales the dots are more dispersed in the 4-acre and 2-acre zone, but then so are the houses. To get a fair comparison you should double the number of dots in mid-country and quadruple the number of dots in backcountry compared to the one acre zone. Mentally doing that shows how good a month January has been for what had been our two slowest areas.
As you might expect with lower sales under $1 million dollars Byram and Pemberwick, for once don’t show a lot of sales, however Glenville with higher price points is doing fine. Central Greenwich, Cos Cob, Riverside and Old Greenwich also continue to do well.
At the other end of the market, the ultra-high end is looking good. The house with an additional lot at 60/62 Oneida in the Indian Harbor Association sold for $19.25 million. At the opposite end of town, a Conyer’s Farm property that was on for $17.5 million just went to contract.
From $5 – 10M we have 8 houses under contract, which bodes well for first quarter sales in what has been our most challenging price range.
Overall, the Dow Jones Industrials topping 20,000 has really put in a spark in the market. The shenanigans in Washington have been ignored so far while the prospect of heightened interest rates has encouraged sales in our mid-market. If these trends continue 2017 could be a very good year.
MARK PRUNER is a Realtor with Douglas Elliman in Greenwich and was their number 1 individual agent in 2015 – 203.969.7900, mark.pruner@elliman.com.
