Single Disclosed Sale Leaves Sturbridge's August Price Trend Unclear

STURBRIDGE -- Worcester County recorded seven property transfers in Sturbridge during the four-week period ending Sept. 5, but only one deed listed a sale price, limiting what can be said about where the local market stands this period.

MARKET OVERVIEW Seven sales were recorded in Sturbridge between Aug. 7 and Sept. 5, all dated Aug. 7 in the registry data. Of those seven, one deed disclosed a sale price: $288,000. Because six of the seven transactions carried no consideration amount, the $288,000 figure stands as both the reported price range and the median for the period, not because prices were uniform across sales, but because it is the only figure available to report. With just one disclosed price, the data does not support any conclusion about whether values are rising, falling, or holding steady in town. The raw count of seven recorded transfers in four weeks is a plain fact of the period; without a comparable count from a prior period, the data alone does not indicate whether that volume is active or quiet for Sturbridge.

TOP SALES The period's only price-disclosed transaction was a Sturbridge property that sold Aug. 7 for $288,000. The deed lists Cheryl A. Rennie as seller and Operative Bank as buyer. No street address was included in the registry record for this parcel, and no bedroom, bathroom, or square footage figures were available.

The remaining six recorded transfers carried no disclosed sale price. At 136 Walker Pond, sold Aug. 7, the seller is listed as a joint trust with David Dumas as trustee. A second deed for what appears to be the same property, recorded at 136 Walker Pond Road on the same date, lists the seller as David Dumas and David E. Dumas, both as trustees. At 27 Valley Road, sold Aug. 7, the sellers are Carl Voellings and Linda Voellings. At 135 Fiske Hill Road, sold Aug. 7, the sellers are PNC Bank NA and Susan E. Haslam, as trustee. At 173 Charlton Road, sold Aug. 7, the seller is Steerage Rock Properties LLC and the buyer is Southbridge Credit Union. At 516 Leadmine Road, sold Aug. 7, the seller is Bradford Campbell. No buyer was listed in the registry data for the Walker Pond, Valley Road, Fiske Hill Road, or Leadmine Road transactions.

NEIGHBORHOOD BREAKDOWN Walker Pond Road accounted for two of the seven deeds recorded in the period, both dated Aug. 7 and both tied to the same address. One lists a joint trust with David Dumas as trustee as seller; the other, recorded separately, lists David Dumas and David E. Dumas as co-trustees as seller, showing a change in the trustee arrangement for that property within the same recording date. No other street name appears more than once in the period's records. The remaining transactions, at Valley Road, Fiske Hill Road, Charlton Road, Leadmine Road, and the address-unlisted parcel that sold for $288,000, are otherwise spread across separate parts of town with no overlapping street names to group.

MARKET NOTES Price-per-square-foot comparisons and bedroom or bathroom counts are not possible because the registry data does not include square footage or unit configuration for any of the seven properties. Two of the seven transactions involved financial institutions directly: PNC Bank NA is listed as a co-seller at 135 Fiske Hill Road, and Operative Bank is listed as the buyer in the period's one price-disclosed sale. One transfer, at 173 Charlton Road, moved from a limited liability company, Steerage Rock Properties LLC, to Southbridge Credit Union, the only deed in the period involving named business or institutional entities on both sides. The two Walker Pond Road deeds are the only same-day, same-address transfers in the dataset, both involving members of the Dumas family in trustee roles. Overall, six of the seven transfers in this period, or 86 percent, were recorded without a disclosed sale price, a pattern to note for readers trying to track local values from public deed data alone.

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.