The headline everyone's sharing this week
NAR dropped its September existing-home sales report on October 13th, and the national headlines wrote themselves. Sales stuck under 4 million for a second straight month. Inventory at its highest level since November 2019. Reporters are calling it a buyer's market. I've had three people text me this week asking if it's finally time to wait this thing out.
Here's the number everyone's leading with: existing-home sales rose 1.5% month-over-month in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.99 million, but that's still down 2.2% from a year ago. Total housing inventory climbed to 1.60 million units - 4.8 months of supply. That's the most inventory the country has seen in six years.
I get why people read that and think relief is coming. But a national number is an average of fifty different markets moving in completely different directions. Connecticut is not Phoenix. Southington is not Austin. And the same report everyone's quoting actually has the proof buried a few paragraphs down.
The number nobody's talking about
Buried in that same release: the Northeast posted the largest annual median price gain of any region in the entire country in September - up 4.7% to $523,600. And it did that while Northeast sales volume fell 2.1% month-over-month and 4.1% year-over-year.
Read that again. Sales going down. Prices going up faster than anywhere else in America. That's backwards from what a normal supply glut looks like. When inventory piles up and buyers have options, prices soften. That's Econ 101. It's happening in parts of the Sun Belt right now. It is not happening here.
So fewer transactions aren't happening because buyers lost interest or found leverage. They're happening because there still isn't enough to buy, and the people who do find something are still competing for it. That's my read on it, full stop. Supply is the whole story here.
Why Southington isn't seeing the same glut
This is the part that gets lost when people read a national headline and apply it to their own street. We cover Central CT - Southington, Berlin, Newington, Glastonbury, Farmington - and the inventory story here has a different cause than the national one.
But it's structural, not cyclical. People who locked in rates at 2-3% back in 2020 and 2021 are not selling. Moving means giving up a rate they'll probably never see again. It also means taking on a bigger payment on whatever they buy next. That's holding a huge chunk of normal move-up inventory off the market, statewide, especially in the $350K-$600K range where most CT buyers are shopping.
At the same time, rents in Connecticut have pushed past $2,000 a month in a lot of towns. That's pushing first-time buyers into the market even with rates where they are. So you've got demand that isn't going anywhere and supply that's locked in place by math, not by choice. Math, not choice. That's the whole game. National headlines about
Frequently Asked Questions
placeholder
placeholder
Does the national rise in housing inventory mean Connecticut is turning into a buyer's market?
No. The national 4.8 months of supply is an average across very different regions, and the Northeast is actually seeing sales fall while prices rose 4.7% year-over-year - the opposite of what a real supply glut looks like. Southington and the rest of Central CT are still tight because local inventory is locked up by people holding 2-3% mortgages, not because demand dried up.
Why are home prices still rising in Connecticut if national sales are slowing down?
The Northeast posted the largest annual median price gain of any region in the country in September, up 4.7% to $523,600, even as sales volume fell. That's a supply story, not a demand story - fewer transactions are happening because there still isn't enough to buy, and buyers who do find something are still competing for it.
Should I wait to sell my CT home since national headlines say inventory is rising?
That's just not the smartest move if you're reading national numbers and applying them to Southington, Berlin, Newington, Glastonbury, or Farmington. The structural reason for low inventory here - people locked into 2-3% mortgages who aren't selling - hasn't changed, so the local supply crunch that's kept prices up isn't going away just because other regions have more homes on the market.
Why isn't Connecticut's housing market behaving like the rest of the country right now?
Because the Northeast's low inventory is structural, not cyclical - homeowners locked into 2020-2021 rates aren't moving because it means giving up that rate for a bigger payment. At the same time, rents pushing past $2,000 a month in many CT towns are pushing first-time buyers into the market, so demand keeps pressure on prices even while national sales volume stalls.
