Since covid shutdown hit March 2020 people have been moving out of highly dense populations to more rural areas. CT has seen a surge of NY residence rushing in to buy single family properties with land and space. Inventory for single family homes was not all that plentiful before covid hit and has now moved to all-time lows. Which is causing everything to go over asking price and driving prices through the roof! So if you’re looking for a home in this area (Fairfield County CT) be prepared to be in a multiple offer situation, and you are most likely going to highest and best offer with the other buyers.

Now originally, I thought this was a bad time to buy because prices are so high. I’m not sure of that anymore! With all this stimulus money printed and prices of EVERYTHING going up on the demand side, inflation is bound rise substantially. Having assets like real estate tied to inflation is very good for an owner, not to mention interest rates are still very low. I do believe there will be some type of housing correction, prices cannot continue to rise like this because wages are not rising along with them. In previous housing bubbles you can tell the market was going to correct when the average medium income compared to what people were paying in mortgage payments did not make sense.

When your mortgage payment is 70% or even more than your income that is problematic. This is public information btw (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/fairfieldcountyconnecticut,CT/PST045219) and it should be closer to 35% of your income. Even worse where people were getting ARM’s (adjustable-rate mortgages) that were bound to go up with market fluctuation. Now people are getting fixed rate mortgages so at least they know what their monthly payment will be consistently. But now it is much harder to determine medium average income because with covid a lot of people are working remote. So that job in NYC paying 150-250k a year can now be done via the internet and zoom meetings and people no longer need to go into the office as much. So, you are no longer locked into the expensive NY real estate prices if you can work from anywhere. Why not sell and move somewhere that your money could stretch so much further?

You cannot time the absolute best time to buy as far as getting a great price or the bottom of the market. But like the saying goes don’t wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait. Over time real estate has been one of the most profitable avenues for creating wealth. So long story short is if you’re looking to buy now be patient, rate lock as soon as you can before interest rates go up. And when you find something you love put your offer in at minimum what their asking price is, and be prepared to over asking if you really want it.