Woodbridge saw momentum in its 2024 real estate market, with a surge in new listings and accompanying sales, including a major new Toll Brothers townhouse development under way. But with the calendar flipping to 2025, not much has hit the market so far — and it's unclear if it will stay that way as the spring market looms in Connecticut, amid stubbornly high mortgage rates.
While greater Hartford was ranked among the top real estate markets in the United States entering this year, that momentum was matched by individual towns in other pockets of Connecticut. In Wilton on the New York line, buyers paid 6% above asking prices on average as sales climbed 12% in 2024, according to preliminary figures from Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties. In Preston near Foxwoods on the Rhode Island line, sales popped 37%.
"Where we have inventory in Connecticut towns, they sell," said Candace Adams, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties based in Wallingford. "The exurbs — they'll go, because there's highly remote workers still, and that's ... the new world we live in."
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In all but 20 Connecticut towns, median prices rose from a year earlier, reflecting both buyer demand and a continuing trend of more expensive houses coming on the market from sellers who don't have to rely on an expensive new mortgage to purchase a replacement home.
Coldwell Banker manager Aileen DeFeo says Woodbridge was able to generate a big year despite mortgages remaining over 6% in 2024. The New Haven suburb's sales were up 45% last year amid a 60% surge in listings, tops on both fronts for Connecticut cities and towns that recorded at least 100 transactions last year as calculated by Berkshire Hathaway.
"We have just under three months of inventory — a balanced market, of course, would be about six months of inventory," DeFeo said. "When a seller is pricing to market, we're still seeing multiple offers."
Woodbridge's gains are being driven by continued interest from buyers who work at Yale University and Yale-New Haven Health, DeFeo said, as well as the Regency at Woodbridge development by Toll Brothers just off the Litchfield Turnpike north of the Merritt Parkway, which has been drawing some Woodbridge residents who are downsizing from existing properties in town. Townhouses there are currently listed between $640,000 — the median price for all houses and condos sold in Woodbridge last year according to Berkshire Hathaway — and $835,000.
Toll Brothers likewise helped drive a big increase in Danbury sales, via its big Rivington development in the city's Reserve neighborhood on the New York line. Among the smaller towns circling Danbury, Bethel and New Fairfield were able to ride booms in new listings to overall market gains.
With the West Hartford market in boom mode since the COVID-19 pandemic, Berkshire Hathaway reported sale prices at 4.9% above final asking prices or more in Hartford's other adjacent suburbs of Bloomfield, East Hartford, Glastonbury, Newington, South Windsor, Wethersfield and Windsor. Only in East Hartford did sellers have to wait longer than a week on average to land an offer to their liking, and only just barely at nine days on average.
Statewide in addition to Woodbridge and Preston, both listings and sales were up by at least a quarter or more last year in Bridgewater, Colebrook, Cornwall, Hampton, Pomfret, Putnam, Roxbury, Sherman, Union, Warren and Woodstock.
Only Beacon Falls saw sales and listings both drop by more than 25% last year, and Berkshire Hathaway data suggests buyer interest remained intact there. Deals took just 10 days to close in Beacon Falls, twice as quickly as in 2023, and final offers came in 2.3% above asking prices on average for the nearly 70 transactions there last year.
Still, buyers chipped away at seller expectations in 2024, with more towns seeing a reduction in that list-to-price ratio. But with few listings hitting in the early weeks of 2025, Adams said buyers should set realistic expectations and prepare to be persistent if their target homes end up in other hands.
"Listings come on and they're off instantly," Adams said. "It looks like we're going to have another spring that people are going to be lining up around these properties."