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May 11, 2020

Hartford area home listings plummet in April; May could be worse

By Joe Cooper

April is typically one of the busiest months for residential real estate, but a new report shows how volatile the housing market has become during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Newly listed homes in the Hartford area fell 48.3% in April on a year-over-year basis as sellers lacked confidence in the housing market amid the spread of COVID-19, according to a monthly report by real estate listings website Realtor.com. 

The sharp decline in the Hartford/West Hartford/East Hartford region was larger than the national decrease of 44.1% last month. The Northeast region, which has been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 crisis, recorded the largest decline in new listings at 59.4%. It was trailed by declines of 49.5% in the Midwest, 44.1% in the West and 31.4% in the South.

In New England, new listings also plummeted 55.2% and 56% in the Providence-Warwick, R.I. and Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Mass. regions, respectively.

Realtor.com says its latest report offers the first full month of data showing the impact the pandemic is having on the nationwide residential real estate market, which could worsen in May.
 
"The good momentum we saw at the start of the year has helped to somewhat insulate the housing market from the coronavirus' negative impact on buyer and seller confidence across the U.S.,” said Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale. “Although we saw sharp drops in new listings, an increase in the time it takes to sell a home and a flattening of prices in April, May is likely to see some of these metrics worsen.”
 
The health of the country's “inventory-starved housing market” will depend on how effective the U.S. is containing the spread of COVID-19 and how quickly the economy recovers, Hale said. 

“If all goes well, we could see buyers returning to the market aggressively this summer to make up for the spring they lost,” she said.

It remains to be seen how Greater Hartford’s homebuying market fared in April. 

In March, single-family home sales continued to surge despite industry fears that the public health emergency would stifle sales because of stay-at-home measures implemented by the state.

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