More homes are on the market in many Massachusetts markets than in any spring since the pandemic ended. But economic uncertainty and years of big jumps in home prices mean fewer and fewer first-time buyers are likely able to take advantage of it. iStock illustration
Massachusetts’ first-time buyers seem to be facing the loosest market in many years, potentially giving hope to homebuying dreams – provided they can afford today’s home prices in the first place.
According to data from The Warren Group, the publisher of Banker & Tradesman, the median sale price of a single-family home in Boston is $590,000 so far this year, up from $575,000 in 2024.
“There’s definitely some significant challenges for first time homebuyers in this area,” Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors CEO Betsy Hanson. “Affordability can go right hand-in-hand with availability as the two main problems that a first-time buyer is going to see in our market.”
The current market presents a storm of difficulties for low-to-moderate income first-time homebuyers, Massachusetts Housing Partnership Director of Homeownership Elliot Schmiedl said.
Down Payment Help on the Rise
With affordability remaining an issue, Schmiedl that it is seeing increased usage of down payment assistance in users of MHP’s ONE Mortgage program. In 2019 just 17 percent of those who utilized the program also utilized down payment assistance. By 2024 that percentage had increased to 60 percent.
First time homebuyers are increasingly using multiple programs to assemble down payments or the overall cost of a home purchase, Schmiedl said.
“I think that pairing programs together has been a successful way for folks to do so,” he said. “First of all, there’s a bunch of programs out there, but publicly funded programs always have an awareness problem. So, we’ve got to let folks know that these programs exist.”
But some buyers are also relying on their family to help them get into a home – over a quarter of Americans between ages 26 and 34 who bought homes last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
“The Boomer parents have become probably the best source of down payment assistance,” said Pauline Bennett, Northeast regional president of Coldwell Banker. “That generation, it’s going to be the largest wealth transfer. That seems to be the actual best down payment assistance for the first-time homebuyer.”
Massachusetts Association of Realtors 2025 President Sarah Gustafson said she has seen an increase in family gifts to help increase deposit amounts among her clients. Gustafson is the operating principal and principal broker at both Keller Williams Pinnacle Central and Keller Williams Pinnacle MetroWest.
Inventory Increase Is Relative
Even if today’s first-time buyer might be able to pull a down payment together, they still have to beat out lots of competing offers on many homes they bid on.
And in that department, market trends this spring might have been giving some first-time buyers and their agents some hope.
According to MLS data compiled by real estate brokerage and listings portal Redfin, numbers of active single-family and condominium listings, combined, were up 15.62 percent year-on-year in Greater Boston, and 9.77 percent in the Worcester metro for the four weeks ending April 27. On Cape Cod, the jump was even bigger: 26.41 percent.
Experts interviewed for this story generally credited an increase in sellers coming to market with the inventory bump, in part thanks to things like career moves or family growth from the last few years. Additionally, some noted that the mortgage rate lock-in effect appears to be weakening as consumers come to terms with the current interest rate environment.
“Some of the research on that says at some point people just have to move,” Schmiedl said. “I think maybe we’re starting to see some of that natural movement starting to happen completely regardless of rate, because life events happen.”
“The struggle is even with more inventory coming on in many of our communities, statewide, we are still in a critical housing shortage,” said Gustafson. “So even with the increase that we’re seeing, in order to get to a stable market, we would need six months’ supply, and across the state, we are very short of that number.”
According to Redfin data, Greater Boston’s housing market sat at just over 3 months of inventory as of April 27, the most recent data available. That’s a huge increase over the same periods in 2022, 2023 and 2024, but far short of Gustafson’s benchmark – and inventory levels are still substantially below where they were before the pandemic in every Massachusetts housing market.
Sam Minton
Not Every Home a Good Fit
And while inventory might be increasing, not all of that inventory will be suitable for first-time homebuyers. Redfin-compiled MLS data shows that the median-sized home that went pending in Greater Boston was nearly 1,800 square feet during the four weeks ending April 27.
“There’s definitely more inventory but that doesn’t mean that it’s inventory that’s suitable for a first-time homebuyer,” said Bennett. “So, what we see a lot like the best strategy that we see buyers employing is expanding their geographic area that they’re searching in, and then just being ultra buttoned-up in terms of their offer strategy.”
Still, Gustafson is hopeful that in the coming years, these pressures will be reduced if Massachusetts can fix its long-running housing production problems.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that we lacked production for so many years, and now we need to help get that going so that we can get more actual units, supply that didn’t exist previously, to help balance some of this out. That is going to help alleviate for the first-time homebuyers, help stabilize the market, and that’s what everybody’s trying to get to.”
