Luxury condominium buildings on Fan Pier in Boston's Seaport District. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff

The Greater Boston luxury home market saw listings and pending sales activity slow down over prior years as 2026 opened.

According to a new report from Redfin, new listings (down 8.9 percent), pending sales (down 7.8 percent), closed home sales (down 15.6 percent), and active listings (down 0.3 percent) all dropped year-over-year in the Boston metro in January. The lack of activity is combined with a 9.3 percent increase in median sales price for luxury homes, ending February at $2.84 million. The drop in homes sold was the fourth-largest in the country .

Redfin’s economics team defines “luxury homes” as those estimated to be in the top 5 percent of a metro area based on prices of homes sold over a rolling 12-month period.

Luxury home-sales markets in metros across the United States experienced similar dynamics a Greater Boston. New listings (down 3.1 percent), pending sales (down 3.6 percent), and luxury home sales (down 3.2 percent) experienced declines, while active listings increased by 4 percent and the median luxury sales price also increased by 4.4 percent

Further evidence in the decline in activity is made clear in how long homes are sitting on the market. On average, across the United States, the median days on market for a luxury home is 69 days (3 percent increase). In Boston, the median days on market increased by five days to 55 days on average.

Metro-level luxury market data for January 2025 was not immediately available, but national-level data from Redfin showed pending luxury sales rose 4.5 percent year-on-year in January 2025, while inventory was up 5.6 percent and the median luxury sale price was up 6 percent. That month saw the Trump administration take office, but most of the policies that continue to create uncertainty in the markets, like significant tariffs and immigration raids, had largely not been enacted by the time the month closed. January 2025 also saw rising long-term interest rates, and came on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s rapid-fire rate cuts in the fall of 2024 that had driven notable optimism in the real estate sector and elsewhere.

Due to a better-than-expected January jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Redfin Head of Economics Research Chen Zao said, interest rates could tick upwards, but more certainty in the job market could bring even more buyers into the market. The bureau reported that 130,000 jobs were created in January.

“For the housing market, this data means slightly higher mortgage rates,” she said in a statement accompanying the analysis of January 2026 data. “But the impact is small because the Fed was expected to hold rates steady regardless of jobs data. A less shaky labor market could help to bring some buyers off the sidelines.”