“By most measures, buying or renting a home remained an expensive and, too often, unaffordable proposition for Connecticut residents over the last year, despite a downturn in sales, price, and demand,” reports the Partnership for Strong Communities, a Connecticut advocacy and research organization. Drops in these traditional housing indicators are not enough to close the gap between the money people make and their capacity to buy or rent a home.
Housing costs and income determine if a family can afford a home. According to the Partnership, personal income in the state grew 43.3% but the median sales price grew 49.1% since 2000. This and other trends might explain Connecticut’s four-year trend toward renting rather than owning.
The interplay of housing costs and income are not the only forces at work. “Economists and experts largely agree that increasing fuel and energy costs, the difficulty in obtaining mortgages, the aging of the state’s population and other factors all add up to a market shift: larger homes and those far from transit with high energy or transportation costs may no longer have broad appeal.”
Partnership for Strong Communities, Housing In CT 2001 http://pschousing.org/files/PSC_HsgInCT2011_10-11-11.pdf
