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The prolonged slump in the housing market has been tough on the economy and tougher on anyone trying to sell their home. It’s also been a trial for realtors, most of whom don’t see a paycheck from one long-delayed sale to the next. WNPR’s Harriet Jones reports.
Jordan and Elizabeth Hudak are members of that rare species, serious home buyers. They’re viewing a house in Avon. You might think they’re sitting pretty… not so, says Elizabeth Hudak.
“People have said it’s a buyer’s market, but I haven’t seen that yet.”
They’ve twice put in offers on homes they were interested in, only to see the seller in each case take the property off the market.
“It was just kind of unexpected. It was – woah, not only did you reject our offer, but you didn’t like it so much you took your house off the market. You got out of the game.”
Jordan Hudak says he sees a complete disconnect between sellers’ expectations and the real market for homes.
“I think with the run up, with the housing boom, people saw home prices skyrocket, and now that’s kind of fallen apart. They might have seen it as an investment – I want to retire and this house is what’s going to get me there, and then when home prices go down 25 percent in two years, people have a hard time accepting that, I guess.”
So far, the Hudaks, who relocated from Colorado in May, have looked at 68 homes in the greater Hartford area. In this economy, many haven’t been maintained or upgraded to the standard they’re looking for. According to their realtor, Berlin based Mary Jean Agostini, this kind of mismatch is typical of the stalled market of the last few years.
“Buyers are very choosy about what they’re looking for. They’re very particular, and they’re very educated. Most people that are out looking now want a house that they can move into, all updated, turnkey – they can just bring their clothes and start living.”
She says while the behavior of buyers and sellers is understandable, given the economic conditions, it doesn’t make life easy for realtors.
“Being in the business for 25 years, I’ve been through three down markets, and this one is the worst.”
In Middlebury 18 agents work for the independent realty business of Bannon and Hebert.
“The market really peaked, believe it or not in the second quarter of ’05.”
Co-owner Mary Ann Hebert says the down market has been longer than many people realize.
“That was the actual peak. People really didn’t start talking about the market decline until late ’06 when we had started to see it already. We started seeing price reductions, we started seeing time on the market lag longer.”
Hebert started the business with her partner Donna Bannon in 1996. She says it’s only because they saved money during the hot market of the early 2000s that they’ve been able to sustain the company in these lean times.
“We’ve always been pretty conservative. When the market was really good, we always remind ourselves that we lived through the late 80s, early 90s, and things do turn.”
At the height of the market, Bannon and Hebert employed 26 agents, all of whom work entirely on commission. That’s now down to 18.
“It’s been hard on a lot of our agents. It’s been very very hard on a lot of our agents. People can work for months and months and months and not get a paycheck.”
And she says that’s a familiar story throughout the state.
“Probably in 2007 I think our membership of the Connecticut Association of Realtors was close to 18,000 members. It’s probably just about 16,000 right now.”
“Every day between what the federal government, the local government, and unfortunately what sometimes the news media reports, we get hammered.”
Independent realtor Gene Fercodini is the current president of the Connecticut Association of Realtors.
“I see the front page of our Waterbury paper says “housing market drops another three percent.” Well, that’s true in Vegas, it’s true in California – it’s not true in Connecticut.”
He says while it is a difficult market, national doom and gloom over housing sales unnecessarily depresses sellers here in the state. But Connecticut does face challenges. The Association mounted a fierce lobbying campaign earlier this year against the conveyance tax – a revenue raising idea in Governor Malloy’s budget. While they were successful in turning back a proposal for a conveyance tax on buyers, the existing seller’s conveyance tax was made permanent and was raised from July 1st.
“I would say 95 percent of the people are just shocked that there’s even that tax there. A lot of people will say, well, rather than list my house today, I’d like to think this over. You can put a conveyance tax on a property that can take someone right out of the picture of affordability.”
Fercodini says he doesn’t yet see a willingness at the capitol to shape policies that will revive an industry that was once a driver of the economy.
For WNPR, I'm Harriet Jones.
