New-home construction has buoyed home sales and prices in some parts of Worcester County this year. Marketing for the Oak Ridge Townhomes, an 84-unit development in Worcester, started in March and already 40 townhouses have been sold. Prices start at $209,000.

All eyes may be on the World Series champion Boston Red Sox, the red-hot New England Patriots and the outcome of this week’s closely contested presidential election. But real estate industry practitioners also have something else on their minds: the performance of the residential real estate market. Sales of single-family homes in Massachusetts rose nearly 14 percent, while condo sales jumped 17 percent during the first three quarters of the year, defying the predictions of those who anticipated a market slowdown in 2004.

Home prices also experienced double-digit price appreciation, with the median price for a single-family home rising 10.6 percent to $325,818 from January through September of this year, according to The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman.

The increase in sales and prices comes at a time when Realtors in many regions of the Bay State have been reporting that homebuyers have had a greater number of for-sale properties from which to choose and homes are taking longer to sell this year.

A total of 51,642 single-family homes were sold, up from 45,382 during the first three quarters of 2003, according to The Warren Group. There were 22,404 condominium sales, a substantial increase from the 19,131 condo sales posted during the first nine months of last year. The Warren Group collects statistics from registries of deeds throughout the state.

“It’s been a very good year again. It’s just amazing to me,” said Pam Cote, a Beverly real estate broker who is president of the North Shore Association of Realtors.

Karl Case, an economist and professor at Wellesley College, said the increase in sales and prices is surprising given the lackluster performance of the economy and disappointing employment numbers in this state. “I’m frankly a little puzzled by why and how it’s [the market] remained so strong,” said Case.

The real estate market has benefited from low mortgage interest rates, and many homebuyers who feared interest rates would increase may have been pushed to purchase a home earlier this year, explained Case.

But Case said the “mood” has changed, with the inventory of homes listed for sale growing, and he anticipates a slowdown in the market.

“When that will occur relies on how much growth we see in the underlying economy,” he said, noting that factors like employment numbers, home inventory and new housing starts are key.

Anecdotally, Realtors say it’s taking longer to sell properties, particularly higher-priced homes, as the supply of homes listed for sale has grown. Yet in most parts of the state, homes are staying on the market an average of two months, about the same as a year ago, suggesting that buyer demand remains strong.

In fact, on the North Shore – an area encompassing communities like Beverly, Danvers, Amesbury and Salem – average marketing time has decreased eight days. It took an average of 62 days to sell single-family homes listed for sale on the North Shore during the first three quarters of the year, down from 70 days a year ago, according to information provided by NSAR’s Cote.

The number of single-family homes listed for sale, however, grew from 2,875 last year to 3,187. Meanwhile, condos were on the market an average of 64 days before selling, the same as last year, with 1,725 condos listed for sale vs. 1,314 during September 2003.

Statewide, the number of available homes currently listed for sale is still considered low. Currently, the inventory of available homes in Massachusetts equals a supply for about 5.4 months, according to Cote. Realtors consider a market with anywhere from a 7.5- to 8.5-months’ supply as being in balance with no discernable advantage to either buyers or sellers.

Stale or Sale?

Dick Cahill, president of the Norwell-based Jack Conway & Co., said homes are still selling relatively quickly, even though there are more houses on the market today in Plymouth County than there were six months ago.

Sales of single-family homes in Plymouth County increased 19.2 percent during the first three quarters of the year, according to The Warren Group. The median price for a single-family home in the county climbed to $324,000, during the first three quarters of 2004 – a 12.5 percent increase from a year ago when the median price was $287,950.

Cahill, who was preparing to speak to group of bankers last week about the state of the real estate market, said there were about 1,700 homes listed for sale in Plymouth County in April. That number grew to 2,300 as of last month.

However, Cahill said the average time it took to sell single-family homes in Plymouth County has dropped from an average of 78 days in April to 71 days in October. In Norfolk County, the marketing time stayed about the same during that six-month period, dropping from 63 to 62, and in Suffolk County homes took an average of 57 days to sell last month compared to 61 in April.

Still, Cahill and other Realtors say homes that are overpriced are lingering on the market longer. “If you don’t price your property properly it may not move,” said Cahill.

Many Realtors anticipated that home prices would flatten this year, and some are still predicting that the market will moderate in upcoming months. “Houses are moving if they’re priced right, but we’re probably at the beginning of a flattening-out [period],” Cahill said.

George Cooper, president of the Plymouth County and South Shore Association of Realtors, said both buyers and sellers have benefited from this year’s real estate market. Both have been able to take advantage of low interest rates, he said, and with more homes available, buyers have had more choices. Sellers, meanwhile, have benefited from healthy price appreciation.

“I think investing in property is still a good thing to do,” he said.

Leif Rosseland, senior vice president and regional manager of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Worcester, said inventory has built up in the Greater Worcester area and some sellers who don’t reduce their asking prices are likely to see their homes stay on the market longer. “There’s still a lot of property that is stale,” he said.

But communities in the Greater Worcester area have seen an influx of homebuyers this year because of new-home construction in the area, according to Rosseland.

In Worcester County, some 3,600 single-family homes and condos were sold during the first three quarters of the year – 8 percent more than a year ago. The median price for single-family homes sold in Worcester County rose 10 percent to $253,000 during that period, while the median condo price reached $172,000 – 7.5 percent higher than at the same point during the prior year.

With the new homes costing much less than homes located within the Interstate 495 and Route 128 corridor, prospective homebuyers have been drawn to the area, said Rosseland. Communities like Charlton, Dudley, Webster and Sturbridge, as well as Grafton, Shrewsbury and Westborough, have seen a “tremendous amount of buyer activity,” because of new-home development, he said.

In addition to the new construction, another factor that has made the area more desirable, particularly to those who must commute to Boston for work, is the commuter rail train that goes into Worcester. Rosseland said that well over 60 percent of the residents who live in a new housing development in Dudley that Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage began marketing four years ago work in downtown Boston.

In July of last year, Coldwell Banker began marketing Biscuit Lofts, a residential project that involved the conversion of an old industrial building in Worcester into 43 lofts. The project, which will be completed within the next two or three months, is just about sold out, with a third of the buyer traffic coming from Boston, a third from inside Interstate 495 and a third from Worcester County, said Rosseland.

Coldwell Banker also started marketing a newly constructed townhouse development in Worcester called Oak Ridge Townhomes in March. Forty out of the 84 townhouses in the development have already been sold.

“Today, the hour to hour-and-a-half commute is acceptable and that’s what’s feeding [home sales activity] southern Worcester County,” he said.