This article appeared in the September 21, 2000, issue of The Litchfield County Times
© 2000 The Litchfield County Times
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Helping Small-Town Houses Choose Their Owners

By KATHRYN BOUGHTON
The Litchfield County Times

September 21, 2000 NORFOLK - A real estate agent's job is to sell property, to find buyers to fill vacated homes or to develop empty lots. But for Betsy Little of Colebrook, the job has nuances that are not so easily stated. The realtor, who also serves on the town's Planning and Zoning Commission, sees her job as one that introduces people to a community who will live in harmony with their new town, who will be both comfortable in the community and supportive of it.
     "It's actually a huge responsibility," she said as she relaxed on the couch of a little hideaway studio she and photographer husband Christopher Little created in Norfolk. "You have to be careful-I mean, it's not my job to keep people out of Norfolk and Colebrook, but I want to be able to hold my head up, too. I try to work with my sixth sense, if you will. It's not just finding the right spot for the buyer, but also finding the right buyer for the house. It's a really cool thing to sell a house-that is where these people are going to sleep, to have their meals, live their lives. I think houses sometimes choose their owners, that the people who buy them feel it when they are right."
      Both Colebrook and Norfolk, the two primary towns served by Betsy Little Real Estate, attract a specific type of client, according to Mrs. Little. "No one wants this to become a hot, trendy spot," she asserted. "It's not like the area is top-secret-there is a social life here, but that is not why people come here. If [newcomers] want to be seen and to show off, they wouldn't be comfortable here. People who come here seem to be content to be by themselves a lot. We get a lot of writers, editors, novelists, poets, and a lot of artists.
      "Norfolk is really pretty enveloping," she continued. "A lot of what the town is about is community. You don't have to be part of it, but most people tend to want to. People are tolerant, friendly and accessible, but it works the way it works. Some people I show around don't get it, but others feel it immediately." The ones who "get it" are the kind of people Mrs. Little likes to settle in her towns. "I've had a string of wonderful people who bought houses here in the last year or so," she said. "That sounds a little wimpy, but they really are-young families, some who are here full-time, some New Yorkers who are looking for a nice town where their kids are safe, where the kids can ride their bikes and play outside. I feel as if I have been introducing a whole new generation of people to the town."
      She feels she is successful at matching homebuyers and her towns because she approaches her job "as a person and not a real-estate agent."
      "People distrust real-estate agents," she said. "They think of us on about the same level as used-car salesmen. But I know these towns really well and can describe them to clients really well-and I think that should be important to people when they are buying a home."
      Mrs. Little concedes that Norfolk and Colebrook, which nestle up against the Massachusetts border, are perhaps "a half-hour too far" from New York City for many urbanites looking for a country home. That is a matter of little concern to her. The Commercial Record's real-estate sales figures for the first half of 2000 show a rather ho-hum market, with slightly fewer properties being sold for, at least in the second quarter, slightly higher average prices, but, said Mrs. Little, that kind of performance is not unusual in her towns. Year in and year out, she sells about 15 properties a year.
      "These towns tend to be more stable," she said. "Back in the 80's it was crazed and values tended to shoot up, but then they came down again. The market is always going up and down, but the curves here tend to be more gentle curves. You hear stories out of Litchfield, Washington and Roxbury about how houses are sold before they are even listed. That's not how it works here. Values are somewhat better, and certainly there are interesting properties that sell quickly-I am always getting calls for a farmhouse on 20 acres with a little water feature-but there are not really that many houses for sale. And there tends not to be much turnover. People who come here tend to stay. That's the way it should be. This is a place that tends to get into your blood.
      "It's a little slow right now," she continued. "I don't know why. I think people are on a rhythm they don't even know they're on. Sometimes you can show properties and show properties and nothing moves. And then, all of a sudden, it's like Mercury has moved into some other plane. Last May, there was a little frenzy and everyone wanted to buy something, and then June came and the problems started to crop up and people were backing out. But it never really slows down. If you have a winter when it snows every weekend, yeah, then it will slow some, but the only real slow times are from Christmas to New Year's and around spring vacation."
      In The Commercial Record's tabulation of sales statistics from Jan. 1 through June 30, Litchfield County towns that showed the most change from the first half of 1999 included Canaan, where first-half sales dropped from 31 to 24; Cornwall, where sales dropped from 34 to 22; Falls Village, where sales rose from 11 to 16; Harwinton, where sales dropped from 78 to 40; New Hartford, where sales dropped from 69 to 55; Thomaston, where sales dropped from 93 to 70; Warren, where sales dipped from 20 to 16, and Winsted, where first-half sales jumped from 74 in 1999 to 97 this year.
      Average second-quarter sales prices are not meaningful in smaller towns, where they may be based on only a handful of transactions.
      Changes recorded in larger towns included a jump of 15 percent in New Milford, from $164,000 in the April-through-June period last year to $188,000 in that quarter this year; a rise of 18 percent in Plymouth this spring; a drop of 37 percent in Thomaston, and an increase of 36 percent in second-quarter prices in Woodbury.
      Across the county, first-half home sales dropped 6 percent, from 2,065 last year to 1,937 this year, but average sales prices in the second quarter of the year were up 5 percent, from $132,000 to $139,000. Condominium sales presented a more uniformly rosy picture, with the number of first-half transactions in the county rising from 245 to 285, and with second-quarter average sales prices jumping from $70,000 last year to $83,000 this year.
      Mrs. Little said that Norfolk and Colebrook do not have the cachet that affluent communities in Southern Litchfield County have developed. Many of the people who travel to her towns looking for properties have some kind of family or social tie there already.
      "These towns tend to be like one extended family, which is not to say that everyone likes everyone else or that we don't have our little intrigues," Mrs. Little said. "It's really old-fashioned stuff, which is not universal when money is God. In Colebrook, for instance, you have the Gin and Chowder Club, which is open to men from all walks of life. The richest man in town sits down to eat with the poorest and they get to know each other. It's subtle stuff, but also quite simple. A lot of the people who come here looking for a house have grown up here or have had friends here. I see a lot of that."
      She is concerned, meanwhile, that people who have grown up in the town be able to continue as residents. "I love trying to help young local families to find a place they can afford," she said. "It's not very easy, but it's important that people who grew up here be able to stay. There are little houses dotted here and there." But even homes that were once considered undesirable by city dwellers looking for a second home are now an endangered species. "For a long time, the New Yorkers only wanted properties outside of town," the realtor reported. "Now they are also looking for village homes."
      Mrs. Little does not consider the current hot real-estate market to be a given, however. "People think this is going to go on forever," she said thoughtfully. "But every day is different, and you never know what is going to happen. The stock market could tumble and gas prices are sure to affect everything. Taxes are high, and I think the contractors are hurting themselves with the prices they charge. Look back at the 80's-everyone was coming in here and buying up property to develop, and then the market crashed and none of it happened." Still, she sees the positive in that past collapse. "None of those developments were built, but the land was eventually sold-to rich people, to be sure-who built single homes and wanted open land around them," Mrs. Little said. "That was really much nicer than having the land go to development. I am Yankee enough to think that less is more."  

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