During the 1970s, the population of vacation-home owners in Litchfield County quickly began to grow. The growth was fed by a stream of artists and intellectuals, many of them supposedly on the run from the Hamptons, where they recognized that preppy coeds, grating disco music and gridlocked weekend traffic signaled the end of their quiet way of life.
Many first became acquainted with Litchfield County through Carolyn Klemm, a former buyer for Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan who along with husband David, co-founded Klemm Real Estate. Longtime residents said Klemm’s weekend garden parties were a gateway for the county’s transformation into a quiet retreat for the city’s intelligentsia.
Klemm said selling real estate wasn’t the only motivation for hosting those parties, but recognized that her soft-sell approach could pay dividends. Understanding that her clients sought solitude but not total anonymity, Klemm invited friends, and then friends of friends, to her home in Washington, Conn. Over the years, her clients have included Tom Brokaw, George Soros, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke and Henry Kravis.
“Klemm is an extraordinary person in a complicated field, and she’s had as much influence on the community as any single person,” said William J. vanden Heuvel, a Litchfield resident who is chairman of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in nearby Hyde Park, N.Y. “When we arrived 20 years ago, we dined with [author William] Styron and [sculptor Alexander] Calder and the most important cross-section of the community. She brought an important element of community into the process of buying real estate.”
A stream of artists like Arthur Miller and Jasper Johns and power brokers like Henry Kissinger began buying homes in this hilly region of northern Connecticut. What they found were acres of forests, rolling hills and a raft of grand country homes only two hours north of New York City.
At the time, Litchfield was going through a shift as many descendants of old New England families and gentleman farmers sold off family holdings.
“Back then, you had a lot of owners holed up in the slightly decaying family mansion, clipping coupons,” said Seymour Surnow, a longtime broker for Sotheby’s in Litchfield County.
These days, buyers don’t need garden parties to see the merits of owning vacation homes in Litchfield County; the area has established itself as a kind of anti-Hamptons.
Horseback riding is an enduring feature of Litchfield County. The county has at least a dozen equestrian centers, and brokers said it’s not uncommon for houses to have garages for cars adjacent to stalls for horses. And whereas parties in the Hamptons are seen as opportunities to show off high fashion, residents said that at social functions in Litchfield, muck boots are more common than high heels.
According to the Connecticut Multiple Listing Service, the average price for a home in the county is $797,500. Brokers said lot sizes typically vary between four and six acres.
Brokers like to tell buyers that whereas $2 million in the Hamptons will buy a small home several blocks from the beach, the same amount in Litchfield County gets buyers a home on several acres of lakefront property.
There is a virtual moratorium on new developments since land trusts own about 10 percent of the land in Litchfield County, according to brokers. The mandate of these trusts is to protect views for residents, hikers and equestrians. Due to the constrictions on supply, prices are stable.
“Inventory is not that high,” said Stacey Matthews, a broker at Klemm Realty. “We don’t get any developments, which helps keep it that way.”
One exception is a residential community called the Club at River Oaks, which is built around an 18-hole golf course in the town of Sherman. The development was originally proposed in the early 1990s, but local residents opposed to the plan stalled development for 10 years. Nineteen of the original 66 lots are for sale, and each two-acre lot sells for $275,000.
Brokers said sales were strong throughout the county in 2007, especially for properties above $2 million. Still, these days, second homes are getting bought as primary homes, particularly by young families who work for financial companies in Fairfield County.