The Fallon Companies’ under-construction One Harbor Shore luxury condominium building on Boston’s Fan Pier is shown in April 2026. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
The metro Boston luxury home market started the year with a lack of sales activity and a lack of inventory, in a reversal of the larger national trend of a reviving market.
For the three months ending on April 30, luxury sales have leveled out with a 0.3 percent increase in homes sold year-over-year, according to a new analysis by economists at Redfin. But pending sales have dropped by 8.6 percent.
Additionally, new listings dropped by 4.5 percent year-over-year, and active listings dropped by 2.4 percent year-over-year, according to MLS data aggregated by the combination brokerage and listings portal.
Redfin defined the luxury segment as the top 5 percent of each metro area’s housing market by price, combining both single-family homes and condominiums. In Greater Boston, that definition generates a market with a median sale price of $2.86 million, Redfin’s data shows.
While for some sectors of the market, mortgage rates and economic factors can have a major impact, the same can’t be said for the luxury market, meaning the slowness in Greater Boston’s high-end housing market is down to other factors.
“When I have a buyer looking at a home above $1 million, interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty don’t matter as much,” Boston-based Redfin agent Stacy Bryant said. “They want to buy a home and have the means to do it, so a 6.3 percent mortgage rate versus a 6.1 percent mortgage rate doesn’t really make a difference.”
Other local observers have described the for-sale luxury market as operating “at two speeds,” where the urban core is grappling with a one-time bump in supply from new condo towers in downtown Boston and the Seaport District and aging Baby Boomers looking to downsize, but stay close to children who themselves traded the city for the suburbs in recent years.
Across the nation, the luxury market is actually seeing a large uptick in activity. Pending sales of luxury homes increased by 4.3 percent year over year, which is the largest gain since January 2025, according to Redfin. Additionally, new listings increased by 2 percent year over year compared with a 0.6 percent gain in non-luxury new listings.
