A few readers complain that my reports of houses selling for less than they were purchased in, say 2003 are the result of my “cherry picking” which houses to showcase. To the contrary, there is so little real estate activity these days that I can report on almost every sale and contract and, so far as I know, I haven’t come across a house that increased in value since 2008. There could be an exception or two that I missed, but trust me on this: if you bought your house within the past five years, you can pretty much expect to lose money if you have to sell now.
Latest case in point is this modest bungalow in Cos Cob at 29 Barton Lane. Purchased for $1.065 million in 2005, it was put up for sale at $1.140 June, 2011. After several price reductions it hit $875,000 this month and that must have been the magic number because it has an accepted offer.
I agree with you that 2010 marked the bottom and last year prices were back to 2003 levels. I suspect this year prices will be back to 2004 or 2005…a slow creep up.
You report at most 20% of the sales in the town. Much better than other bloggers, but by no means complete.
I review them all but certainly don’t report them all. You want that, subscribe to one of the local free cat litter papers here in town.
We, at the large agents, cannot possibly admit that you are correct, but we know you are. We have to carry on playing the game.