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The 2024 Massachusetts residential real estate market had a strong end to 2024.

In December, there were 3,657 single-family home sales in Massachusetts, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. That’s a 16.1 percent increase over the same month in 2023 when there were 3,150 transactions. The median single-family home price increased 11.1 percent on a year-over-year basis to $600,000, a new all-time high for the month of December, The Warren Group said.

Gerry Bourgeois, senior advisor to the CEO & COO at Lamacchia Realty, said rising interest rates at the end of the year may have pushed buyers to crowd into the market, while the fast resolution of the November national elections helped make for a strong end to the year.

“Even though people think rates going up is a bad thing, which it is for affordability,” he said. “However, when people see rates going up, they want to get in before they go up even further. That is likely to have added somewhat to the demand. Also whenever there’s an election, there is uncertainty, and people tend to sit on their hands. When there’s uncertainty, they’re not likely to make decisions but once that uncertainty has been removed, then people start to transact again.”

Looking at 2024 as a whole, the median single-family sale price increased 7.9 percent to $615,000, The Warren Group said.

Colleen Barry, CEO of Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty, said that mortgage rates could play a major factor in the direction of home prices in 2025.

“A lot will be dictated by the mortgage rates,” she said. “They have come up a bit recently due to larger economic factors. If they come down, we could see significant price increases, as buyers will be wielding more purchasing power, and more buyers will enter the market. If they don’t come down, we might not see that kind of upward movement.”

The Massachusetts condominium market didn’t have as strong of a 2024 in comparison. There were 1,492 condominium sales in December 2024, a 10.5 percent increase from 2023, The Warren Group said. But during the entirety of 2024 there were 18,783 condo sales, a 2.2 percent decrease from 2023. The year marked the fewest condo sales in a single calendar year since 2011.

2024 Housing Market Ends With Strong December

by Sam Minton time to read: 1 min
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