Rutland Herald
Jeb Wallace-Brodeur / Staff Photo
The median sale price for an existing
single-family home in Vermont is about $15,000 higher than at the same
time last year. This home is for sale on Terrace Street in Montpelier.
The median price of a home sold in the state through April was $205,000, compared to $190,000 a year earlier, according to the Northern New England Real Estate Network, which tracks home sales in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Sales during the first four months of the year have soared nearly 17 percent with 1,240 homes sold. Statewide, there are 3,433 homes on the market, a 4.2 percent increase from a year ago.
“The buzz is just crazy — it’s amazing,” said Isaac Chavez, chief executive officer of the Vermont Realtors Association.
Chavez said his members “are saying this is the best start to the year they’ve had in six, seven years.”
“I had one person tell me they had more sales in the first quarter than they had in all of last year combined,” Chavez said.
He attributed the boost in sales to an uptick in consumer confidence. In Vermont, he said that’s tied to the state having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.
And while interest rates are starting to creep up, Chavez said mortgage rates remain very low.
(Nationwide, the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index was up 10.9 percent in March compared to a year earlier. The index tracks home prices in 20 cities across the country).
Based on the Northern New England Real Estate Network data, the number of sales of Multiple Listing Service properties were up in all but two of the Vermont’s 14 counties. The exceptions were Rutland and Grand Isle counties.
Six counties experienced a decline in the median sale price.
Rutland County sales through April were flat compared to a year ago with 102 homes sold. However, the median price of $149,750 was up 7 percent from a year ago.
In Chittenden County, the state’s largest, sales were up 12.2 percent this year with 267 homes sold. The median sale price of $281,500, was up 12.6 percent.
Bennington County sales have risen 20.3 percent with 83 homes sold. The median price increased 15.6 percent to $222,000.
Washington County sales jumped 27 percent with 89 homes sold. The median price was down slightly from a year earlier at $166,000.
Windsor County sales posted a nearly 24 percent increase through April with 150 homes sold. The median sale price was up 18.4 percent to $219,000.
The Vermont Housing Finance Agency — a funding source for first-time homebuyers — is reporting a surge in loan demand.
“VHFA’s loan volume is actually up about 35 percent from 2012, in part because volume was very slow the year before,” VHFA spokeswoman Leslie Black-Plumeau said in an email. “Our borrowers are very rate-sensitive and it was hard to get a lot of advantage from conventional rates.”
Black-Plumeau also said VHFA now has available a “Down Payment Assistance Program, which helped (loan) production this spring.”
Statewide, condominium sales remain in the doldrums. Sales year-to-date are down 2.3 percent with 293 units sold. The median sale price was $178,000, a modest 1.2 percent increase from a year ago.
In the ski resort town of Killington, condominium and single-family vacation home sales continues to reflect a tough market.
Condo sales are flat with 20 units sold so far this year compared to 21 a year ago, said Heidi Bomengen of Prestige Real Estate. She said the median sale price of $144,250 is down slightly from a year earlier.
Bomengen said so far this year three single-family homes have sold compared to nine a year ago.
“What I will say is the homes that did close this year were significantly higher priced than last year,” she said.
She said the median price of the three homes sold this year is $555,000, compared to $205,000 for the nine homes sold a year ago.
Bomengen said an additional six homes are under contract that haven’t yet closed. She said one of the homes is listed at close to $1 million and another is listed at $439,000.
She said condos in particular remain a tough sell because banks regard those properties as a higher risk requiring a 25 percent down payment.
Even financing on single-family vacation homes is often a struggle. Bomengen said two of the three homes sold this year were cash transactions. She said buyers who make a cash offer can often get the seller to come down in price to avoid the uncertainly of bank financing.
Peggy Smith of the Macdonald Real Estate Group in Stowe said there’s no question the market is in a recovery mode.
“We are selling more properties,” Smith said. “We have more people interested looking at properties but our pricing is not going up.”
Smith’s assessment goes hand in hand with data from the Northern New England Real Estate Network that shows 55 homes sold in Lamoille County through April, a nearly 20 percent increase from last year. At the same time, the median sale price in Lamoille County has fallen nearly 11 percent to $205,000.
“I think that the reason is because we’ve had reluctant sellers, who have taken quite a few years to realize that they are not going to get what they wanted for their properties,” Smith said. “So now they’re tired and they just decided, OK, for whatever reason, they’re taking the offers they would not have taken a year ago or two years ago.”
In the resort community of Stowe, she said 15 homes sold in the first quarter, the same as last year. Of that number, 11 sales were under $500,000.
Smith said condo sales are on the upswing with 10 units sold in the first quarter compared to four a year ago. She said five of the 10 condos sold for under $200,000.
The rebound in home sales has translated into a bump in the number of people selling real estate. The Vermont Association of Realtors forecast 1,515 members in 2013. But not even halfway through the year, the number has grown to 1,602 members, Chavez said.
“So that’s a huge increase in just a short time,” he said.
He said roughly half of the new members are new to real estate while the other half are returning members, who may have left the business during the Great Recession.
Chavez also said there is renewed interest in the five-day prelicensing classes for selling real estate in Vermont.
The Northern New England Real Estate Network tracks Multiple Listing Service sales in Vermont and New Hampshire. It does not include all properties sold and marketed for sale.
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