We're Turning 60!

This week is Pearce Real Estate's 60th anniversary, and we're celebrating!  My father founded the company in 1958, after a 20-plus year career at the A.C. Gilbert toy company (now turned into artists' studios on Peck Street in New Haven).  Perhaps selling erector sets made him long to sell real buildings, and, early in his career, he actually sold the Gilbert building, after the company was downsized and sold.

Our original location, on State Street in North Haven, has been doubled twice, and we are still headquartered in that building today.  Over the years, we spread our territory, first to the Shoreline, and then to other commercial locations in Greater Hartford and in Milford, but we always have maintained our core principles of local independent real estate expertise and community service.  All eight offices today are filled with dedicated professionals who pride themselves on knowledge and integrity.

We'd like to think that we have indeed made Connecticut better over our 60 years in business.  In addition to providing thousands of hours of human service, and millions of dollars, to all kinds of non-profit organizations around the State, we have changed its landscape.  We have developed housing around the Greater New Haven region for most of that period.  With Don Lippincott, my father developed first an industrial park at Exit 10, and then what became in effect a regional mall at Exit 9.  The latter involved building a road and bridge, which is now called the Herbert H. Pearce and Donald B. Lippincott Commemorative Bridge, and leads to Home Depot, Target, and many other destinations.

His capstone project was New Haven's first mixed-use development, known as Whitney Grove Square.  It has shopping, office, residential, and parking at one location, with a bigger garage across the street. It was instrumental in moving people up from the Green to Whitney Avenue and Grove Street.  Buyers lined up through the night to buy the condos when they went on sale in 1986.  Many residents of the region now live in the heart of downtown New Haven, but it was unusual at the time.

We're proud of history, and of the perseverance that it has taken to survive and thrive for all of those 60 years.  We're prouder still of our associates, current and retired, who allowed us to do so.  And we are grateful most of all to the thousands of clients who have entrusted us with their sales, purchases, and rentals, for decades, and often for generations of the same families and corporations.  We look forward to the future, and know that it will be bright.

Death By a Thousand Cuts

The real estate market in the Greater New Haven area is bifurcated these days.   Some things sell, often with multiple offers, in a few days, while other properties don't even get shown, or don't get offers at all.  The difference is mainly in the urgency that the listing conveys to buyers--they will bid on something that they think won't be there the next time they look, but will wait and ponder on everything else.  There is enough supply so that buyers feel that more will come on every week.  It's a little like Tinder--there have been articles saying that dating apps actually reduce serious relationships, because people can't choose and settle down, when each visit to the site brings new and sometimes exciting options.  Buyers can visit real estate sites whenever they please, or set themselves up for automatic notification of new listings.  This means that they are constantly being presented with new options, hence reducing their sense of urgency about an exisitng one.

In our region, some towns and neighborhoods are hotter than others, and may lack sufficient supply.  There, buyers will put in offers more quickly, although they may then back out on a contingency clause if they find something else they like better.  So, if you don't live in a hot area, like East Rock or Spring Glen, what do you do to get buyers to make offers?

Well, the key thing is not to overprice at the start.  Listen to your agent, and look at other comparable homes.  If you feel that you must try a higher price, make an agreement with your agent to lower the price at a certain point, and go ahead and sign the price reduction at the same time as the listing, so that you don't forget what the advised price was.  And finally, if you do start too high, don't chase the market down.  I titled this article "Death by a Thousand Cuts", because I see a lot of homes, especially in the Shoreline towns, being reduced over and over again by small amounts (and I really mean small--I've seen reductions as low as $1).  While you may think that a reduction will get your home looked at again, what many reductions will do is make people think that there is something wrong with your home, especially if they come from another part of the country where the market may be stronger (and that includes, unfortunately, almost everywhere). 

So, when you do reduce the price, make it dramatic!  Make a statement that you are ready to do business, and choose a price that is compelling, and one that will inspire urgency in a buyer.  Don't feel that you need to save your pride; save the sale instead.  Give buyers a reason to stop looking, and to settle on your home before someone snaps it up at a price those buyers know is going to make it sell quickly. 

Statistics from the Region

It's tempting to make you all guess about market trends for 2010, but it would be hard for me to collect the responses in a timely way, so I guess I will just tell you. The latest Commercial Record shows that, for year over year sales from 2009 to 2010, New Haven County as a whole was down almost 8% in the number of sales. For the immediate towns, Guilford, Madison, North Haven, and Bethany had an increase from the prior year. Guilford and Madison were each up 9%, while the other two had smaller increases.

Surprisingly, the median prices were almost identical in 2009 and 2010, with 2010 coming in at 0.8% less. I expect that most of you would have guessed that prices fell about 10%, so the fact that they actually fell less than one percent is very good news. Of course, as I've often pointed out, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, so it's probably true that only the best houses sold, meaning that most homes would have sold for less in 2010 than in the prior year. As I've discussed in earlier posts, East Rock and Spring Glen did go up in price, showing the "Yale" effect most strongly. North Branford, with 24% fewer sales, had an increase of 10%, and Milford, Wallingford, and Woodbridge had smaller increases. New Haven as a whole crept up 1%.

It is important to recognize, as the issue said in another article, that this is the sixth year in a row that sales have declined. Since prices have also been declining for most of that period, the total decline is larger than what is listed for last year. And, since most homeowners looking to sell haven't been in the market for some time, those yearly decreases can really add up.

However, the fact that we are not in freefall is very good news, and the spring is still ahead of us. Anything could happen, but we're hoping for recovery mode to kick in strongly!