SurgeinHartland home values reflects CT inventory shortage: 'There's just no houses to sell'

Jul. 21—For a rural town at the northern edge of Hartford County, the surging values in Hartland are being referred to by one local realtor as "crazy."

As of June 30, 2022, the average home value in Hartland was $349,188. But fast forward to the end of last month and the average home is valued at $390,687, according to the data. The data is designed to capture the value of a typical property of the neighborhood, and not just the homes that sold or are listed.

"Prices have never been this high," said David Sartirana, a broker at Northwest CT Realty.

And like other industry experts, he said the lack of housing inventory is further aggravated by high interest rates that keep people from putting their homes on the market.

"It's kind of a struggle right now," said Bill Arzt, president of the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors. "There's definitely people looking to buy— and that's what's driving the prices up— because there's just no houses to sell."

Right now, if you wanted to buy a house in Hartland, there are only two houses actively available, Sartirana said. Only four sales have been closed in the last 180 days, he added.

But because Hartland is a smaller, rural area, the inventory is never usually very big, he said.

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The statistics might even appear a little skewed because there's so few sales there every year, said Anna Sogliuzzo, a realtor for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties.

However, in Sartirana's 20 years in the real estate business, he has never seen it quite like this, he said.

"Even in the small rural towns, you shouldn't just have two properties on the market for sale," Arzt said.

And the realtors say they've been seeing this demand that far exceeds the supply since the pandemic.

Additionally, the pandemic caused many people to move from the cities to rural areas in Connecticut, which could still be impacting Hartland, Arzt said. "That's a gorgeous part of the state."

And although it's not like it was during the peak of the pandemic-driven housing search, people are still looking to buy homes, but nobody wants to sell their house when interest rates are so high, Arzt and Sartirana said.

That's what leads to an increase in pricing.

Almost every city in Connecticut is facing this surge in home values, with an especially notable jump in one Hartford zip code, which has gone up 60 percent now.

"Prices are going up in every town," Sogliuzzo said.

But the trend of rising home values isn't specific to Connecticut either, as home values across the nation have hit a record high, according to a recent Zillow market report.

Once interest rates go down and more properties go on the market, then home prices will stabilize, Sogliuzzo said.

But no one could say for sure what the future of the housing market will look like, and Sartirana said he didn't foresee prices coming down anytime soon.

Arzt agreed, saying that there's a lot of people that want to think that things are going to drastically change, but that may not be the reality.

"We don't have a normal market anymore," he said. "I mean, everybody says, 'Oh, when it's back to normal...' but this may be our new normal for a while, we don't know."