The strong real estate recovery that the Bay State has experienced over the past 18 months has been felt across all sectors of the housing market. But as the bidding wars and the listing prices have heated up, it seems that the luxury market has begun providing most of the fuel to the fire.
“In our market, anything $1.5 [million] and under is really flying [off the shelves],” said Amy Mizner, co-broker/owner of Benoit Mizner Simon, which covers Weston and Wellesley.
Through August, single-family sales over $1 million are up 27.7 percent, going from 1,370 in the first eight months of 2012 to 1,749 during the same stretch this year, according to data from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. Overall, single family sales have risen just 5.2 percent across the Bay State in that same time period.
That’s a reversal of what we saw last year as the housing recovery was just beginning to pick up steam. Through August 2012, single-family sales over $1 million were up 11.6 percent over the prior year, while all single family sales rose 22.7 percent.
High-end listings, too, are on the rise – up more than 22 percent, according to data from MLS PIN. But even with more high-end houses on the market, the available inventory is selling quickly. While tight inventory has been a common feature across all sectors of the Bay State housing market, sale times for higher end home have sped up even more quickly than for most. For the first eight months of 2012, $1 million-plus homes averaged about 159 days on market (DOM), while DOM for the market as a whole was 126 days. So far this year, DOM for $1 million plus sales has shrunk to 116 days, a decline of 27.3 percent, while DOM for the market as a whole is down to 96 days, a drop of 23.8 percent. List-to-sale price ratios are also up, for all by the most rarefied of sales.
“While the old bad joke is that the three most important things in residential real estate are ‘location, location, location,’ I’m more convinced that it’s ‘timing, timing, timing.’ There’s a significant increase in the available inventory of very expensive properties because of renewed confidence on the part of high wealth individuals,” said Mark H. Lippolt, senior vice president of operations for Chestnut Hill-based Hammond Residential Real Estate.
Wealthier individuals have the capacity to wait out a down market, and the return of these higher end listings is a sign of renewed confidence. “The owners of estates and mansions in the Greater Boston area now sense that the timing is right to place their properties on the market,” said Lippolt.
Already this year, we’ve seen the highest priced listing ever in Massachusetts, a $100-million plus, 266-acre swathe of Martha’s Vineyard. And the hot spring market saw dozens of sales over $5 million, many of them dotted across the suburbs and not simply confined to the heart of Boston or the resorts of the Cape.
Adding it all up, the resurgence of the high-end will mean that even if absolute sales numbers increase only modestly, volume should be up significantly. That’s already being reflected in the median sales price in the Bay State, which was up more than 12 percent through the first half of the year, according to The Warren Group data. If the fall market stays strong, 2013 may be one of the best years yet for the agents and brokers.
“It’s nice to have something to celebrate,” said Mizner.
Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com
