I bought my current house ("in the Waterbury area") last year and sold my old house (closer to the NEK) this year (well, 2022). I would absolutely send postcards and even knock on doors and ask people if they'd consider selling.

I think the normal market is fucked. When we sold our old house, we had four bids over our asking price and we never put it on the market (it never hit the MLS). Instead, we had been getting it ready to sell for a year, so everyone in town knew we were selling, and people just started reaching out. By the time we were done fixing it up, we had offers already, so we skipped the whole realtor/MLS thing.

Same when we bought our current house. A friend/colleague of mine mentioned that she was moving and I asked if we could see her house before she listed it. We made an offer, she accepted, and it never hit the market either.

Lots of places are selling that are never showing up on Zillow/MLS and not even showing up on realtor's radars. If you don't participate in the "off-MLS" real estate scene, you're missing a significant portion of the stuff that's out there.