September’s home sales figures confirm this summer’s talk of a sudden intensification of buyers’ interest in the suburbs was no mere passing fancy.
Single-family homes in Greater Boston’s suburban counties far outstripped their Suffolk County condominium contemporaries in numbers of homes sold so far this year and in growth in median sale price according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
While all parts of Massachusetts save the Berkshires saw a decline in single-family sales thanks to two months of lost business when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its worst in March and April, Middlesex, Essex and Norfolk counties saw a 7 percent decline in total sales through Sept. 30 compared to a 10 percent decline sales of condominiums in Suffolk County.
Even more telling: Those urban condos have only seen a 5 percent appreciation in their median sale price while those same suburban counties saw between 10 percent, 12 percent and 6 percent growth, respectively, in their median year-to-date sale prices, despite the presence of many luxury condos for sale in South Boston and the Seaport District, among other neighborhoods.
Of course, this does not mean urban housing markets, luxury and otherwise, are dead. Middlesex County condominiums – a market heavily influenced by sales in Cambridge and Somerville – saw their median sale price grow by 10 percent even as the number of sales dropped by 10 percent. Plenty of buyers exist for such a product even if competition isn’t as fierce.
And it still remains to be seen how long this trend will last. Do this year’s trends represent pandemic panic? Low-interest rate mania? Or do they presage something more durable?
It’s quite possible the 42,566 households that have bought single-family homes in Massachusetts so far this year are a sign of things to come.
While the current economic and epidemiological circumstances are a major factor in these trends, consider this: America has 5 million more people in their early 30s right now than it had 10 years ago. That’s prime homebuying and family-formation age. These Millennial children of Baby Boomers were all starting to look for homes right when COVID-19 and the real estate industry’s nimble response to it created ideal conditions for them to act.
But public officials should not take this to mean it’s pointless to build the kind of denser housing we need to beat climate change and our never-ending affordability problems.
After years of housing policy in Boston and its suburbs created a supply of new homes tilted towards products only rich empty-nesters and young professionals could afford, suburban single-family homes are where the bulk of the state’s family-friendly for-sale inventory still resides. Thus, when those Millennials went looking, that’s what most of them chose to buy.
Architects, developers and officials should take this year’s market trends as an important sign: Massachusetts must do more do add denser family-friendly housing stock in its suburbs lest we sprawl further into carbon-spewing oblivion.
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