A shift in condo prices may be the first sign of a long-term change in what types of housing are desirable to Massachusetts residents – and one that could impact home values for the whole market.

Ever since the great housing bust of the mid-2000s, both single-family and condominium prices have been meandering on a long road toward recovery. But while prices and sales are back to something like normal in many Bay State cities and towns, there’s a new normal: Condo prices have recovered faster and more robustly, quickly driving median condo prices to near-parity with median single-family home prices in many cities and towns, especially in Greater Boston.

That shift, economists say, is part of a longer-term trend that’s making condos more desirable to many buyers than single-family homes.

“The major factor that’s driving all housing prices is the rapidly shifting demographics. I think what’s happening is that you have a large number of aging Baby Boomers, who are starting to think about giving up their family homes, starting to put them on the market, and they’re looking for something smaller, that doesn’t have the upkeep. And condos are perfect,” said Barry Bluestone, a professor of economics at Northeastern University and principal author of the Greater Boston Housing Report Card, which spotlighted the issue.

The shift began even before the boom. Using data provided by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, Bluestone calculates that between 2000 and 2005 condo prices skyrocketed 70 percent, from just under $177,000 to more than $300,000, compared with a 56 percent rise in single-family home prices during the same period. While both condos and single-families were hit by the crash, condo prices weathered the crash better, declining 8.7 percent between 2007 and 2009, in contrast with a 14.7 percent decrease in single-family home prices. And now, during the recovery, condo prices are soaring again, rising 22 percent from 2009 to $341,000 by the third quarter of 2014, while single-family home prices had levelled off.

All that means that in many places in the Bay State, condo prices are reaching near-parity with single-family home prices. In 2000, the median condo was worth about two-thirds of the median single-family home, a sales prices ratio of 68 percent. But by late last year, the median condo sale price was 88 percent of the median single-family home price.

Those numbers could draw even closer together in future – and that could have significant impact on the overall market. At the same time as many boomers are looking to downsize, more and more Millennials, burdened by student debt, are waiting longer to start families and buy homes. And whenthey do, they’re more drawn to denser, transit-friendly, amenity-packed urban living. That means the demand for the sprawling suburban homes Boomers are looking to unload may be lower than the demand for town- or city-center multifamily units.

Suburbs Unprepared
And while many Boomers may want to age in place, many others may be forced to downsize as mobility issues and other side effects of aging make climbing slippery stairs, shovelling snowy driveways, and navigating narrow hallways a real health threat and not just an annoyance. A recent study by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies on the housing needs of older adults found that homes built after 2000 were up to five times more likely to have accessibility features built in. The Northeast, with its older housing stock, was the region of the country least likely to have features like single-floor living, wide hallways and easily accessible electrical outlets.

Many Massachusetts cities and towns, especially outside of the immediate Greater Boston area, may be unprepared to deal with the dipping desirability of their existing housing stock. More than one-third of Massachusetts municipalities had fewer than five condo sales in all of 2014. And median prices overall have recovered more quickly and robustly in denser metro-Boston area than in the more rural portions of the state.

“What we’ve seen in our buyer surveys is that Millennial buyers want it all – they want that single-family home, but near urban amenities,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at Redfin. But in an expensive market like Boston, condos “really are the entry into the market” for many Millennial buyers.

That attraction toward urban amenities affects Boomers, too, said Richardson. “When people say they want to downsize, they don’t just mean a smaller house. They want a smaller home near cooler stuff,” she said. The question will be, how many among the Boomer generation will be able to afford to make that transition? For those who have built up significant equity in their homes in desirable suburbs, switching over to urban condo living as they age will be appealing, said Richardson.