By Judy Szablak

Like many reports over the past year, there is good and bad news in the latest statistics. Average sale prices are up over last year for the first half of 2012.  At the same time, unit sales are down by 10 percent from last year during this same period.

This home at 5 Lowlyn Drive is listed at $2,495,000. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Photo courtesy of Halstead Property

There were 163 sales reported in the first six months of this year with an average sales price of $1,493,789. In 2011, there were 181 sales with an average closed price of $1,372,646. Average market time has stayed fairly consistent at 110 days this year as opposed to 107 days during this same period in 2011.

While looking at these raw figures, one might deduce that the prices have risen almost 9 percent from the first half of last year, which would not be the case. The increase in the average price can be directly attributable to an almost 17 percent increase this year for home sales in the $3 million-plus range.

All being said, continue to be cautiously optimistic.  While the average sales price is up, the number of units sold are down.

By Neena Satija

www.ctmirror.org

A crisis in affordable housing, a struggling economy and rising gas prices are creating a slow-but-steady shift in some of Connecticut’s wealthiest areas: its small-town suburbs.

Faced with a demand for smaller, more energy-efficient homes or rental housing even in these areas, developers are taking advantage of a law that’s been on Connecticut’s books since 1990 to build high-density apartment complexes in areas where almost none exist. Known as 8-30G, the statute allows developers who build affordable units to override local zoning codes in towns where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is deemed affordable. [Westport is among such towns.]

Since January, four developers in Ridgefield have gotten approval to build a total of 39 new rental units in town, a portion of which will be dedicated to affordable housing—and the neighbors aren’t happy about it.

“I would have liked to feel that I have some kind of community, where we can have some control,” said Amale Hawi, who lives around the corner from a future development on Gilbert Street, where eight units will be built on one-third of an acre. That is 24 times the density of the surrounding neighborhood, where single-family houses like Hawi’s rest on 1-acre lots.

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