New Construction Update

Earlier this year we noted that the new construction inventory represented slightly more than the equivalent of the previous year's sales of new homes. Year to date there have been a total of 53 new homes sold (including those that are currently under contract) in Westport. This compares favorably with 2006 results.

There are currently 58 homes that have already been built that are currently on the market, plus an additional 12 homes that have not yet broken ground. Between now and the remainder of this year I would expect that a number of these homes with go under contract. There continues to be activity in this sector. For example, a new home that had only been marketed for 2 months at $3,395,000 just accepted an offer in the last couple of days, and there have been numerous showings of new homes under this price point.

Based on the homes that have already sold this year, 2008 will most likely have a one year's inventory of homes for sale in Westport. There are currently 10 homes for sale which were built in 2006. It will be important to watch and see what happens to these homes. Many of these, are in the range over $3,000,000. To this point some of these have been reduced, but not dramatically.

Sales to date have generally been within 5% of the final asking price. The strength in the market for new construction has been under $3,000,000. The average price for new construction has been increasing beyond the average for the market. We will update these figures at year's end to see how this year compares to 2006.