The Warren Group’s complete 2015 retrospective will be available in late January, but with 11 months accounted for, here’s a look back at the year in real estate – the good, the bad and the still ugly.
It’s been all good news all year – for the industry. In a seller’s market, bidding wars escalated and cash sales for condos climbed. As home values stabilized and equity rose, HELOCs came into play in a big way (see next week’s B&T for more on that product’s resurgence in the market).
The statewide numbers paint the picture in broad strokes: single-family home sales grew 10 percent over 2014, racking up a total of 49,604 sales through November. The median sales price, while not as torrid, grew a respectable 2.3 percent, from $332,500 to $340,000.
But all real estate is local. It’s a bit of a wild ride in the counties, which for the most part saw big gains in prices or number of sales, but not both. Nantucket claimed the dubious distinction of being the only county where sales were down year to date – nearly 9 percent over 2014 – but also had one of the highest median price increases at 3.67 percent. The November numbers are even more stark in Massachusetts’ smallest county – year over year, the number of sales were down 10.53 percent and the median sale price was up a whopping 36.5 percent. But that doesn’t touch Dukes’ November stats – sales were up 36 percent and the median price up 52.19 percent. Clearly a number of people were vacation-home shopping last month.
Perennial favorites Suffolk and Middlesex top the price charts with year-to-date growth of 5.39 percent and 4.31 percent, respectively. The median year-to-date sale price in Suffolk was $425,000 and in Middlesex it’s $460,000, making them the top two most expensive counties (discounting Dukes and Nantucket).
The real winner may be Central/Western Mass., where Worcester and Hampden counties claimed the top two spots in sales growth. Hampden took it all with an 18.25 percent increase year to date in number of homes sold, while Worcester came in second with nearly 15 percent. Prices did not keep pace; Hampden’s median sales price was up only 1.7 percent and Worcester 2.13 percent.
Franklin County had the poorest overall showing, with no change in the median price and a meager 3 percent increase in number of sales.
In total it’s a pretty good picture of a housing recovery here in the Bay State – again, if you’re in the industry. For would-be homebuyers, however, challenges remain.
A 20 percent down payment on a single-family house at the statewide median is over $66,000. To put that into perspective, a potential buyer would need to put away more than $5,000 per month to save that amount in a year, or more than $1,000 a month over five years. That’s an astronomical sum to attempt to save while renting in Greater Boston.
Our housing market’s issues are manifold and complex, and no single solution can solve them – but we’d better start now, or we’ll be having the same conversation next year.
