UMass Building Authority's $3.75 Million Purchase Headlines Hadley Property Transfers

HADLEY -- A $3.75 million purchase by the University of Massachusetts Building Authority was the standout transaction among a dozen deeds recorded in Hadley over the past month, a period in which banks, credit unions and family trusts accounted for much of the recorded activity.

MARKET OVERVIEW Twelve deeds were recorded in Hadley between Sept. 18 and Oct. 17, according to Hampshire County Registry of Deeds records. Sale prices were available for six of the 12 transfers at the time of this report, ranging from $40,000 to $3.75 million, with a median of $150,000 among the priced sales. The remaining six had no price yet on file, which is typical of recent recordings and does not indicate the parties withheld the figure. The 12-count includes an institutional purchase, several transfers to banks and credit unions, a municipal acquisition, a family trust transfer and a town zoning board decision, so the raw total does not reflect 12 conventional sales between individual buyers and sellers.

TOP SALES The largest transaction was 100 Venture Way, which sold for $3.75 million on Sept. 30. The seller was listed as Research Park LP, with O'Connell Hadley Corp. as general partner; the buyer was the University of Massachusetts Building Authority and the Massachusetts Community University of Massachusetts. A Hadley property with no street address listed in the deed sold for $701,500 on Sept. 18, from seller JMT Management LLC to buyer Lion Rock Holdings LLC. At 11 Sunrise Drive, Andrea B. and Paul T. Picard transferred the property to Citizens Bank N.A. for $200,000 on Oct. 2. Two transfers were recorded at $100,000 apiece: 27 East Hadley Road, sold Sept. 23 by Timothy W. and Donnalee S. Bushey to MassMutual Federal Credit Union, and 5 Cold Spring Lane, sold Sept. 21 by Anthony S. and Amy E. Fyden to UMassFive College Federal Credit Union.

NEIGHBORHOOD BREAKDOWN Sunrise Drive saw two recorded transfers this period: 11 Sunrise Drive, sold for $200,000 to Citizens Bank, and 10 Sunrise Drive, a trust transfer with no price yet on file. Among the six priced sales, one exceeded $1 million (the Venture Way institutional purchase at $3.75 million), one fell in the $500,000-to-$1 million range (the unaddressed Hadley property at $701,500), and four were under $500,000, ranging from $40,000 to $200,000. Three of those four under-$500,000 transfers had banks or credit unions as the buyer.

MARKET NOTES Of the six transfers with recorded prices, four listed a bank or credit union as the buyer: Citizens Bank N.A., Polish National Credit Union, MassMutual Federal Credit Union and UMassFive College Federal Credit Union. No bedroom, bathroom or square-footage data was available in the deed records for this period, so no price-per-square-foot comparisons can be made. Two entries in the dataset were not conventional property sales: the transfer at 14 Breckenridge Road was recorded as a loan modification agreement involving Florence Bank, and the entry for 20 Mount Warner Road reflects a Hadley Zoning Board of Appeals decision on a variance rather than a sale. Two other transfers appear to be within the same family or trust: 22 Shattuck Road moved from Paul D. Jordan to Paul D. Jordan and Joanne E. Baker, and 10 Sunrise Drive moved from the Frederick L. Blajda Real Estate Trust, with Ronald Blajda as trustee, to Frederick L. Blajda. The property at 153 Russell Street was acquired by the town of Hadley from seller Jeffrey C. Mish; no price was yet on file.

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.