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

The Greater Boston luxury housing market kept up its weak performance in the third quarter, but now with signs inventory may be on the rise.

Thanks in part to buyers’ and sellers’ economic jitters, a restrictive interest rate environment, the loss of a major local supplier of below-market-rate financing and a glut of units from luxury towers delivering, high-end homes in the region have moved slowly and price increases in the segment have been muted for much of the year.

A new analysis by brokerage and listings portal Redfin found that the median sale price of homes in the top 5 percent of the Boston-area market by value increased by a mere 2.3 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, to $2.25 million, compared to 4.2 percent for homes in the middle 60 percent of the market. There, the median sale price landed at $677,000 in the third quarter, by Redfin’s calculation.

And, unlike the inventory-starved nest of the housing market, the number of listings in the top 5 percent of the Greater Boston market rose 6.4 percent in the third quarter year-over-year and the number of homes first listed in the same period rose 5.2 percent. The increase in homes on the market could presage less upward pressure on prices in the luxury segment.

In the second quarter, a similar Redfin analysis found that the median luxury sale price in Boston rose 0.5 percent year-over-year compared to 3.4 percent for non-luxury homes, while the number of luxury listings fell 5.6 percent versus a 32 percent drop in the number of non-luxury listings.

The weakness has tripped up at least one luxury developer, with the Cronin Group having to replace its first brokerage partner with The Collaborative Cos. last month in an attempt to revive lackluster sales at its St. Regis Residences development in Boston’s Seaport District. Carpenter & Co., developer of Back Bay’s One Dalton tower, also recently brought in TCC to sell off a clutch of units it had held back from the market for unknown reasons when the tower first opened in 2019.

But others appear to have dodged the market’s bullet. Developer Noanet Group said it has pre-sold around 80 percent of the 147 units in its new Raffles Boston hotel-condominium tower in the Back Bay via TCC’s Manuel Davis and Cindy Dwyer, and developer MP Boston’s in-house sales team claims a brisk pace of units going under contract – albeit not on par with Raffles – since its Winthrop Center tower opened this spring.

Boston’s market appears to be bucking a national trend of a strengthening luxury market. Redfin reported that the median sale price of a luxury home nation-wide rose 4.6 percent in the third quarter while the number of luxury listings nationwide fell 2.4 percent and the number of luxury properties first listed in the third quarter fell 17.1 percent, compared to a mere 1.5 percent increase in the non-luxury median sale price and an 18.8 percent drop in active listings and a 29.8 percent drop in new listings in the non-luxury space.