Lower priced houses selling, but luxury houses a drug on the market

By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo

The Norfolk real estate market has been hot in 2015, but only at the bottom half of the market. A total of 23 homes have sold in town since January, all for under $600,000.

There have been zero sales in the luxury market in 2015, although there is one pending sale of a home that was originally listed for $1.45 million, but the sale price is expected to be considerably less than that. Even with almost nothing moving at the high-end, sellers are not deterred—five properties have been listed for over $1 million in the last year.

Martha Mullins, who has been a realtor with Best & Cavallaro for two years, broke down the MLS listings for the 45 properties on the market in Norfolk in 2015. She answered three questions about our town’s real estate situation: how long a residence is on the market, what the price range is and what the difference was between the listing price and the sale price of each property that sold this year.

The average number of days a house in Norfolk sits on the market is 948—that’s over two and a half years. Even when removing the four oldest listings (four properties have been on the market for seven to eight years), the average days on market only comes down to 938. Safe to say, it takes a while to sell a house in Norfolk.

The price range of homes currently on the market swings from $49,900 to $12.5 million. There are two houses on the market for over $5 million, five houses listed between $1 and $5 million, six houses with list prices between $700,000 and $1 million and eight properties for sale between $500,000 and $700,000. At the lower end, there are nine properties on the market between $350,000 and $500,000, nine properties listed between $200,000 and $350,000 and six properties for sale under $200,000.

Based on 22 of the 23 homes that have sold since January (data is not yet available for one sale), four homes sold between $500,000 and $700,000 for an average of 17 percent below asking, two homes sold in the $350,000 to $500,000, averaging 10.73% below asking. The six homes that sold between $200,000 and $350,000 were an average of nearly 19 percent off the list price and the 10 homes that sold under $200,000 averaged 37.92% below asking.

Betsy Little, who has been selling houses in Norfolk and Colebrook for 20 years, points out that listing price has a lot to do with the success of a sale. Homeowners who have realistic expectations of the market do a lot better than those who stick to inflated prices, but it’s more than that. “The days of Norfolk as a second home market seem to be over,” Little says. She identifies “the new normal” for Norfolk homebuyers as one of two things—either recent retirees (or older people planning for retirement years), or “can-do” young people.

Little says, “Norfolk was never a place where you bought a house to make a huge profit off it. Home ownership here isn’t your 401k, it’s your life. You move to Norfolk because you had a connection to it earlier in your life or because you’re comfortable enough in your own skin to take a risk—a leap of faith—and move to a small town where you don’t know anyone. It’s a small, welcoming community, but you don’t know that until you are living here.”