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When it comes to profiting off home sales in New England, results may vary.
Among metro areas with populations over 1 million, the biggest annual drops in typical single-family and condominium sales profit margins included Boston. Home-sellers’ profit margins in Greater Boston were down from 81.8 percent in the third quarter of 2024 to 70 percent during the third quarter of this year according to a new report from real estate data firm Attom.
But within the same parameters, the biggest annual increases in typical home and condo sales profit margins included Hartford. Greater Hartford home-sellers saw a higher profit margin than their peers in Boston: 75 percent in the third quarter.
“Profit margins remained steady and high throughout the traditionally busier summer selling season,” Attom CEO Ron Barber said in a statement included with the report. “While continuously rising prices could have chased away buyers and slackened demand, the recent dip in mortgage rates may be helping to keep more people in the market.”
Across the nation, homeowners made a 49.9 percent profit on typical single-family home and condo sales during the third quarter. That was up slightly from the 49.3 percent profit margin posted in the second quarter but still below the 55.4 percent typical profit sellers saw in the third quarter of 2024.
Outside of price appreciation, steady buyer demand played a role in the third quarter, an Attom spokesperson said in an email.
“Profit growth outside of price appreciation may be driven by a combination of long-term equity buildup and steady buyer demand,” Barber said in an emailed statement. “Homeowners who sold in the third quarter of 2025 had owned their properties for an average of 8.4 years, the longest average tenure in at least 25 years, which may have allowed them to accumulate substantial equity through years of appreciation and mortgage pay-down. Profit margins appear to have remained strong through the typically busier summer selling season, supported in part by the September dip in mortgage rates that may be keeping more buyers active in the market. An increase in all-cash purchases and a decline in distressed sales may also be contributing to price stability and giving sellers additional leverage.”
Buyers in New England are also taking longer to sell their homes. The metro areas with the longest average homeownership tenure for homes sold in the third quarter featured Cape Cod which was the area with the overall longest tenure (14.4 years). Connecticut’s Fairfield County, an exurb of New York City, was also among the longest tenures averaging 12.8 years.
Cape Cod also featured some of the highest rates of all-cash transactions in the nation with 64.7 percent of deals in the market purchased with cash.
