In July, single-family home sales in Massachusetts had their best single month since June 2005. Condominium sales also surged in the Bay State, posting their best month since August 2007.

There were 7,077 single-family sales in July 2015, a 24.31 percent increase from July 2014. There were 2,794 condo sales statewide, a 20.07 percent increase from last year.

The communities that saw the biggest year-to-date gains in sales prices were Charlestown (44.95 percent), Stockbridge (30.2 percent), Princeton (30 percent), Orleans (27.58 percent) and Mattapan (26.56 percent).

Nancy Roth of Hammond Residential in Charlestown said one reason for the dramatic increase in median sales prices in that neighborhood is that a couple of large, high-end single-families went on the market earlier this year and drew buyers from all over the city. When those houses sold, many of the remaining buyers continued to look in Charlestown, driving up demand – and prices – on the limited number of remaining single-family homes in the market.

“Charlestown is significantly less expensive than the South End, Back Bay and Beacon Hill,” Roth said. “Also, people want to be able to walk to a coffee shop, restaurants and great supermarkets. Walkability is really important. Charlestown has that town center thing going on. It’s only a mile by a mile. I call it ‘the suburbs of the city.’”

Roth said she sees a lot of buyers who work in the biotech industry in Kendall Square, many of whom work long hours and don’t want to tack a long commute onto their day.

“It’s an easy commute and Charlestown is a contained village that isn’t priced out of this world,” Roth said.

Amenities like the new development at nearby Assembly Row are helping fuel interest in Charlestown as well. Roth said she thinks the year will end on a strong note.

“There’s a whole lot of people holding back listings until after Labor Day,” she said. “I feel like the demand will still be there, but you don’t know until you have those open houses. I feel like we’re on a big upswing as a city. I think the buyers will be there.”

Steven Godfrey of Realty Consultants in Dedham covers a territory that includes Mattapan and surrounding communities. He said home prices in Mattapan are rising for several reasons, including buyers who are getting priced out of neighboring Jamaica Plain and the South End.

“Mattapan has inventory, relatively low prices and it’s attractive,” Godfrey said. “There’s a lot of development and city and state investment into transportation, like the commuter rail is coming into Mattapan. Any smart consumer is going to do their homework and see all that.”

Godfrey said Mattapan is on the rise and still has plenty of room to grow.

“All I can tell you is, it’s been a seller’s market for the last two years. Supply is low and demand is high,” Godfrey said. “Mattapan has great residents who are civically engaged and working on quality of life issues and it will only get better.”

Looking Beyond The Numbers

Randy Thunfors of Stone House Properties in West Stockbridge said the numbers aren’t enough to paint an accurate picture of what’s happening in his market. He said the market has been strong, but about the same as last year.

“We have so few sales relative to some other towns, that one big sale can skew the numbers dramatically,” Thunfors said. “There was a house that went on the market this weekend with a minimum bid of $8.5 million. That’s going to bring the median way up.”

While sales numbers statewide were strong, the news wasn’t great in every town. The five biggest drops in median sales price were Cotuit (-14.12 percent), Boylston (-18.55 percent), Boston (-19.41 percent), Lanesborough (-21.48 percent) and Becket (-22.11 percent). Agents who work in those communities caution against drawing conclusions from those numbers.

Thunfors said that Lanesborough and Becket, two communities that are also part of his market, aren’t significantly depressed, but may have had some large sales in the first half of last year that artificially make it look like they’re not doing well this year.

Lauren Demerjian of Open Door Real Estate in Sterling said she was surprised to hear that prices dropped so much in Boylston and gone up so much in Princeton, which are both in the market she covers. She said home sales in the towns in the Wachusett school district are just starting to recover from the recession and are doing well, for the most part.

“We’re always behind the curve,” Demerjian said. “We watched the recovery hit closer to Boston a few years ago and things still weren’t moving here. When the market was at its worst, things here were really, really bad. This was the first year since things hit rock bottom where it’s August and people are still buying houses. We haven’t seen an August like this in I don’t know how long.”

Rick Healy is the president of Foster-Healy real estate in Leominster and said that overall, the market in Central Massachusetts is doing well. He said that in towns with as few sales as Boylston (34) and Princeton (around 15), a few distressed or high-end properties can skew the median prices and cautions against reading too much into them.

“It’s very difficult to draw accurate conclusions from some of these numbers,” Healy said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that the same house in Princeton that sold for $262,000 last year would sell for $341,000 this year.”