The list of Bay State communities with million-dollar home prices is growing.
Brookline and Lincoln rejoined a group of communities with a median home price over $1 million in 2007, according to The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman, which collects sales data from the registries of deeds.
The two sought-after towns made a comeback last year after falling off the exclusive list in 2006. Median home prices in Brookline and Lincoln exceeded $1 million in 2005. But Brookline’s median price dipped to $977,500 and Lincoln’s to $865,000 in 2006.
Local Realtors weren’t shocked that those towns have million-dollar medians even though prices have slumped in other areas. They say strong schools, access to public transportation, and proximity to significant employment centers in Boston and Cambridge make the communities highly desirable.
“Right now, these communities are like blue chip stocks. It’s the perfect time to invest in blue chip stocks when overall prices have come down,” said Brigitte Senkler, an agent in Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage’s Concord office.
Lincoln, in particular, also has preserved a lot of open space, shutting off parts of the town to new housing development and helping to push up prices of existing homes. Most of the town has 2-acre zoning, making the community an ideal choice for people searching for homes with land near Boston, said Senkler.
“Lincoln is always going to be a popular town because there’s only so much real estate in the town. There’s not much to be developed,” she said.
David Friedberg, president of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, said communities like Brookline usually are the last ones to experience a decline and the first to recover during a downturn.
“In both communities, you have to consider the supply-and-demand issue,” said Friedberg, who manages Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage’s Brookline office.
In Brookline, the number of single-family home listings has fallen over the last three years. There were 37 single-family homes listed for sale last week, compared to 64 during the same time last year, 74 in 2006, and 55 in 2005, according to Friedberg. Prices for homes listed last week ranged from $425,000 for a two-bedroom cottage to a high of $7.95 million for an almost 11,000-square-foot mansion on Green Hill Road.
Lincoln had only 12 single-family homes on the market last week, down from 30 during the same week in 2007. “We’re actually hurting for good inventory right now,” Senkler said.
Other communities that consistently have reached the $1 million mark over the last three years include Weston, Nantucket, downtown Boston and the Martha’s Vineyard town of Chilmark.
Weston’s median price hasn’t slipped below $1 million since reaching the high mark in 2003, according to The Warren Group.
An uptick in the sale of high-valued properties has helped drive up prices in Weston, according to Realtor Tom Matthews.
“I think a lot of that is due to instability with other financial markets, like the stock market,” said Matthews, an agent at Prudential Wilmot Whitney in Weston. “People want to put their money into a tangible asset.”
Buyer financing will be a key issue in some of these upscale towns, according to Matthews. He said sales will suffer if homeowners wanting to move into towns like Weston can’t sell their existing homes because tighter lending standards are limiting the buyer pool.
“If there’s a shift where people can’t get financing, that’s one area that could affect our marketplace,” he said.
Dover is the only community where home prices peaked to over $1 million three years ago that has failed to regain its high-priced prestige. Dover’s median price last year was $945,000 up from $887,500 in 2006 but lower than the $1.06 million median recorded in 2005.
Friedberg expects the list of million-dollar towns will expand in upcoming years.
“I will tell you that because real estate has traditionally been the best investment vehicle, especially long-term, I have to believe that prices will continue to rise and there will be more million-dollar communities,” he said.
But Matthews apparently isn’t so certain. A big challenge is that declining values in some suburbs could hurt the purchasing power of would-be buyers who can’t get as high a selling price for their properties, he said.
Statewide, the single-family home median price fell nearly 5 percent to $310,000 in 2007, according to The Warren Group. Even some of the state’s priciest towns, such as Wellesley, Carlisle and Lexington, have seen prices decline over the last two years.
In Wellesley, the median home price last year was $899,000, 5.3 percent lower than the $950,000 median reached in 2005. Carlisle’s median home price plunged 12 percent to $727,500 from $828,444 two years earlier. And Lexington’s median went down from $691,500 to $667,000 in 2007.
