This three-bedroom, two-bath Cape-style home on Metropolitan Avenue in Roslindale is currently being offered for sale at $279,000. The home was fully renovated five years ago.

Sales of single-family homes in Suffolk County have hit a three-year slide but prices have continued to rise steadily – at least 15 percent annually since 1999.

Realtors serving Suffolk County, which includes all the Boston neighborhoods, Revere, Chelsea and Winthrop, said the low number of for-sale homes and strong buyer demand is at the root of the sales and price trend.

Revere was the only Suffolk County community that appeared to buck the single-family sales trend. There were 232 single-family homes sales last year in Revere, up from 177 in 2000, and 215 in 1999, according to statistics compiled by The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman.

Known for its grit and working-class roots, Revere also hit another milestone in 2001. For the first time, the median price for a single-family home in Revere hit the $200,000-plus mark. The median price for a single-family home last year was $210,000, up more than 18 percent from the $177,500 median price in 2000.

“We [Revere] have a lot to offer,” said Vincent Cavarretta, who has been selling real estate in Revere for the last 20 years.

Buyers, particularly first-time homebuyers, are attracted to Revere because of its affordability and close proximity to Boston, said Cavarretta, a broker associate with Century 21 Citiwide in Revere.

“Before, we would see a lot of people from East Boston who considered Revere an upgrade,” said Cavarretta. “Now we’re getting a lot of calls from [buyers in] Somerville and Charlestown.”

Public transportation is an added amenity. Revere has three stops along the MBTA’s Blue line – Wonderland, Revere Beach and Beachmont.

“A lot of people want to be able to get on the T and be in Boston within 10 minutes,” said Cavarretta.

The same could be said for the Boston neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain, Roslindale and West Roxbury, but unlike Revere, single-family home sales in those communities have dropped.

The sales drop wasn’t unusual because sales of single-family homes fell last year in most parts of state, except for the Western and Southeastern regions, including Franklin, Plymouth and Bristol counties. The number of single-family home sales in Suffolk County decreased by more than 16 percent between 1999 and 2001, falling in both 2000 and 2001 compared to the previous year. The county witnessed 1,614 single-family home sales last year, compared to 1,934 in 1999. Countywide, single-family home prices jumped more than 40 percent between 1999 and 2001, rising from $174,900 to $245,250. The median price for Suffolk stood at $206,250 in 2000. The median price has increased 89 percent over the past five years, according to statistics compiled by The Warren Group.

Single-family home prices in Roslindale, Jamaica Plain, and West Roxbury were no exception, with the most dramatic spike occurring in Jamaica Plain last year.

“All three markets [Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, West Roxbury] have more buyer demand than supply,” said John Maxfield, broker/owner of the Jamaica Plain office of Prudential Prime Properties.

Buyers priced out of more expensive communities like the South End, Brookline and Cambridge, and those who don’t want to deal with the parking hassles of those locales, are helping fuel the market in those three Boston neighborhoods, according to Maxfield.

“Jamaica Plain and Roslindale are becoming rapidly more popular to our feeder communities,” said Maxfield. “Those are the communities [South End, Brookline and Cambridge] from which we generate our buyers.”

‘Some Resistance’

In Jamaica Plain, where the number of single-family home sales have hovered in the high 80s to 90s in the last four years, the median price for a single-family home shot up to $400,000 last year from $299,000 in 2000 – a 34 percent increase.

Single-family home sales in Roslindale fell more than 18 percent since 1999 from a high of 209 to 170 last year. But like most Bay State communities, prices were up in Roslindale. Roslindale’s median single-family home price increased a healthy 11 percent to $249,500 last year.

Maxfield and other Realtors said they have been busy lately because there was a considerable slowdown in the months after Sept. 11 and that has led to pent-up demand.

In the higher-end neighborhoods of the Back Bay and South End, Realtor Lucian Estevez started to see business slow down as the economy and high-tech industry started to suffer.

Currently, lower-priced homes are moving quickly because the buyer pool is there and because interest rates are low. That could change, according to Estevez, if interest rates start to rise or the economy worsens.

When asked whether buyers would begin to balk at the dramatic price appreciation that has been occurring over the last few years if the economy doesn’t improve, Estevez said, “I think there might be some resistance.”

But just how much buyers can resist prices increases is hard to say because there isn’t an abundance of for-sale single-family homes in the Back Bay and South End.

“There’s very few single-family homes on the market right now,” said Estevez.

There were nine single-family homes for sale in the South End with prices ranging from $670,000 to $2.1 million last week, according to Estevez. Two of the homes have been on the market since May 2001. Meanwhile, the Back Bay has six homes for sale with prices ranging from $1.9 million to $25 million. Two of the Back Bay homes have been on the market from June of last year, while the others were listed three or four months ago.