Data Story

Introduction: Affordable Housing Crisis

Through working with our community partners, the Center for Leadership and Justice, we have learned about the difficulties and intricacies of buying a home in this decade, where it has become increasingly challenging. Many factors, such as income, job stability, and credit score, disadvantage families. The Center for Leadership and Justice created the Urban Suburban Affordables (USA Housing), a program that has purchased land underneath more than 200 homes in the Greater Hartford area. This initiative helps hundreds of low-income families purchase homes. Our collaboration with our community partners has allowed us to analyze their data for the 212 homes. The community land trust (CLT) allows homeownership to be more affordable to buyers by separating ownership of the land and the home. The organization owns the land, while homeowners purchase the house at a reduced price. USA Homes also supports homeowners, reducing foreclosure risks and stabilizing neighborhoods against displacement. By using Zillow and the town property assessor to obtain the estimated values of the homes that have been sold, we can share knowledge and data with our community partners to help them better understand how the erratic economy has impacted their homes. Each sale also indicates two to four different homeowners, and the data will show how the value of each home has negatively or positively impacted the organization. It is essential to compare the prices and dates of sales of the USA homes to national data to see how trends in the Greater Hartford area coincide. Our analysis shows that despite our world's unstable economy, the USA Homes program has provided stability for low-income families in the Greater Hartford area, even as national and local market trends have experienced challenges. We find that while the program reduces some market inequities and improves homeowner stability, it also highlights ongoing struggles tied to home affordability and rapidly increasing prices. These findings can guide future strategies to strengthen our community partners' housing initiatives.

Our Question

The question is: how has the housing market impacted the USA homes' sale rate and price changes in the suburbs of Hartford? In this heavily fluctuating economy, the stability of a mortgage can be tough for families to maintain. By researching 20 houses in the suburbs of Windsor and Bloomfield, CT, we chose to chart and map 10 from each town that have been sold multiple times, starting from when the organization started in 1995. To conceal the addresses of the homes in Windsor and Bloomfield, we used the letters "B" and "WN", along with a number that represents the index of that number in the list of addresses we were given.

To help us obtain this information, we had the help of the CLJ Website to help provide important facts for our introduction.

Findings on Sale Trends

Figure 1: This visualization displays the price increases in each of the ten properties we chose in Windsor. Each home’s original price, price increase, and total estimated price (according to Zillow price estimates), are in these single bars - the blue being the price when first sold post CLJ, the green being the the total increase in price, and those bars are stacked to show the Zillow estimated price as of 2024. This visualization shows that, for each bar, the ratio of first sale price and Zillow estimates are very similar among all 10 homes - even if they end up at different prices, they usually increase by a similar percentage (typically 350-375%) - and therefore, the prices in Windsor are all very uniform. While we were unable to figure out a way to show the percent change among every home in this chart, the median percent change is over a 350% increase (368.04%), and the average percent change is just over a 500% increase (508.75%). Other notable increases were that of WN18 with the largest price increase of the homes (1906.67%), and W17 with the smallest price increase (264.49%). The real estate market is very predictable in Windsor, as all of the homes have similar price patterns - the key similarity being that they only go up.

Figure 2: In a direct contrast to Windsor, the market seems to fluctuate dramatically in Bloomfield, as shown in the ten chosen properties - with some increasing drastically, some increasing minimally, and one (house B10) even decreasing in value. These price ratios are noticeably less uniform; in Windsor, the houses typically had a small original price, and a dramatic increase in price leading to the assessed value - and even though the prices were less uniform, this rule still applied. Interestingly, the final assessed prices are, for the most part, very similar - just under $300,000. In Bloomfield, the median home had a price increase of over 300% (329.41%), and the average home had a price increase of just under 400% (396.48%) - both values are considerably lower than that of Windsor. Lastly, other notable percentage increases are the lowest increase (163.88%), and the highest increase (1148.10%) - these are notable because of how much lower these values are than the highest and lowest increased in Windsor, continuing that trend, and proving that, at least with these homes, prices increase significantly more slowly in Bloomfield than in Windsor. The market in Bloomfield appears to fluctuate a lot more than Windsor, and therefore makes it much less predictable - given that, it is surprising to see how every single price increase percentage displayed is substantially lower than the Windsor data, therefore showing that the prices of these homes increase significantly more slowly than the homes in Windsor.

Findings on Turnover Rates

Figure 3: This graph shows the turnover rate of homeowners from 1995 (when USA Homes acquired the land). The national average turnover rate of about eight years per owner is in the middle of the graph. For the Windsor home, the average turnover rate was approximately 2.5 homeowners since 1995, compared to the national average of 3.75 different owners over the past 28 years. These homes being below the national average potentially indicates that USA Homes in Windsor demonstrate stability in homeownership. This is useful for USA Homes to observe, as they are achieving their goal of creating sustainability for families in the program.

Figure 4: Differently from Windsor, the turnover rate in this graph tends to be much higher than the national average in Bloomfield, CT. Most of the homes we analyzed have a significantly higher turnover rate of around four or five. This inconsistency instability suggests that these homes may have faced issues with the neighborhood or the interior/exterior of the house, prompting owners to move out at a faster rate. It could also be attributed to financial instability among individual homeowners in Bloomfield. This information is crucial for our community partners, as it highlights areas where homeowner stability is lacking.

Sources and Methods

We chose the houses initially just by those which had the highest and lowest values when first sold, but eventually decided to pivot and choose houses which had been sold the most, and therefore had the most data. In the end, the majority of this extra sale data has not been used fully, as the only values we really used were the first sale price (since CLJ was founded), and assessed value as of 2024 according to Zillow price estimates. The main issue with this data, particularly with the Zillow price estimates, is that it gives the price for a regular buyer - not a buyer who needs support from CLJ to buy a house - therefore, the sale data will always be much less than the price estimate as long as CLJ owns the property. This means the Zillow price estimate is not reliable for CLJ to use, as it does not factor their financial support into the final price. However, given that this is an issue for every single home and not just a few of them, using that data still has some value in showing how the value has increased over time, but it is still important to keep in mind that the Zillow price estimate will be inflated.

Works Cited:

NA. “Housing Initiatives.” The Center for Leadership and Justice. https://cljct.org/what-we-do/housing-initiatives/. .

"The Average Length of Homeownership." The Zebra, The Zebra, https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/average-length-of-homeownership/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20the%20average%20person,you'd%20like%20it%20to. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024..