Mortgage Filings, Not Home Sales, Dominate South Hadley Deed Recordings in October

SOUTH HADLEY -- Of the 13 property documents recorded for South Hadley addresses at the Hampshire County Registry of Deeds between Sept. 25 and Oct. 24, the large majority were mortgages, loan modifications and family or trust transfers rather than conventional home sales between unrelated buyers and sellers, leaving the period with little usable data on home sale prices.

MARKET OVERVIEW The registry recorded 13 documents tied to South Hadley properties during the period. Three carry a dollar figure: $352,500 at 134 Main St., $200,000 at 8 Pheasant Run and $70,000 at 13 Apple Rd. In each of those three cases, however, the listed buyer is a lending institution, First Community Mortgage Inc. and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. at Main Street, Freedom Credit Union at Pheasant Run, and Country Bank for Savings at Apple Road, indicating the dollar figures reflect mortgage amounts rather than sale prices paid by a new owner. None of the 13 recorded documents show a completed arm's-length sale, with a market price, between a seller and an independent buyer. The remaining 10 entries carry no dollar figure at all. Given that, the period does not support a meaningful sale-price range or median for South Hadley home sales.

TOP SALES No qualifying home sales with market prices were recorded in the period. The three largest dollar figures in the dataset are all mortgage transactions: $352,500 recorded Sept. 28 at 134 Main St., with Elwira Maria Tyra and Mateusz Sudol as grantors and First Community Mortgage Inc./Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. as grantee; $200,000 recorded Sept. 25 at 8 Pheasant Run, with Jacqueline and James Grochowalski as grantors and Freedom Credit Union as grantee; and $70,000 recorded Sept. 25 at 13 Apple Rd., with Ryan M. and Jason M. Mainville as grantors and Country Bank for Savings as grantee.

NEIGHBORHOOD BREAKDOWN No street had more than one recorded document in the period, so no street-level sales cluster emerged. By document type, six of the 13 entries were mortgages to lending institutions (134 Main St., 8 Pheasant Run, 13 Apple Rd., 136 East St., 119 Brockway Ln. and 1 Spring Meadows); three were other mortgage-related filings that did not involve a change of ownership (a subordination agreement at 17 Highland Ave., a modification agreement at 192 Brainerd St. and a declaration of homestead at 47 Hadley St.); and four involved an actual change of property ownership without an available sale price, including a deed from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. to Susan Gail Enselek at 43 Pine Grove Dr., a transfer into a family revocable trust at 12 Crystal Ln., a transfer within the Croke family at 23 Magnolia Ter., and a transfer from GoodLeap LLC to Jocelyn Hurley at 47 Chestnut Hill Rd.

MARKET NOTES The period's filings are notable mainly for what they are not: a typical run of arm's-length home sales. Six of 13 recorded documents, nearly half, are mortgages in which a credit union, bank or mortgage company is listed as grantee, a pattern consistent with refinancing or purchase-money financing rather than open-market sales. Two entries, the Crystal Lane trust transfer and the Magnolia Terrace transfer among Croke family members, read as transfers within the same family rather than sales to outside buyers. One entry, the Pine Grove Drive condominium unit transferred from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. to an individual buyer, is consistent with a foreclosure-related conveyance, though the deed data does not specify a sale price. No bedroom, bathroom or square-footage data is available from deed records for any property in this period, and no single-family-versus-condominium breakdown can be drawn beyond noting that Pine Grove Drive is identified as a condominium unit while the remaining addresses carry no unit designation.

Recorded Deeds

Source: Registry of Deeds. Sale amounts shown as recorded; transfers without a disclosed consideration are noted as such.

Compiled from official town feeds, community organizations, and local press. Outside reporting is attributed inline.