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With home sales effectively flat across the state last month, January offered few signs of encouragement that the 2024 housing market will be a significant improvement over last year’s.
“Relief for prospective homebuyers with realistic budgets seems unlikely,” said one observer.
“The level of buyer interest is the strongest we’ve seen in at least six months…What we need now is an influx of listings to meet the demand,” said another.
A key leading indicator both statewide and in Greater Boston – numbers of new listings in January – showed some improvement, but buyers are still staring at markets with huge shortfalls in the number of houses available for sale.
And that’s a recipe for price increases.
What else is on tap today?
- Milton Punished for Vote: The state is stripping Milton of a six-figure coastal resiliency grant awarded only a month ago after voters there rejected a multifamily zoning package last week in defiance of state law.
- 70K SF Lab Lease: A speculative lab project in Waltham landed its largest tenant to date in a Framingham-based biopharma company.
- New Springfield Branch: Ware-based Country Bank is planning to put up a branch in Springfield by 2025 to establish a physical presence there amid growth opportunities and intensifying competition in the Western Massachusetts market.
- New MBTA Ideas: Gov. Maura Healey’s task force on funding transportation in Massachusetts hasn’t even met yet, but already ideas being explored by researchers retained by the MBTA hint at the solutions Healey’s task force could generate.
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Show Me the Data!
These are the top 10 existing, recent single-family home sales in Middlesex County.
What Did I Miss?
Here’s what you might have missed in Sunday’s newsletter. Not a B&T subscriber? Fix that here.
- Regional banks in Massachusetts reported an increasing share of troubled office loans in their Q4 earnings calls, a trend that may continue in the next few quarters.
- When it comes to describing what’s happening right now in the real estate market, you can take your pick, but downturn, recession or even depression all seem like good fits right now. You just wouldn’t know it from reading the business press.
- For any number of reasons, U.S.-born workers have been reluctant to join the construction workforce, leading to consistent labor shortages and rising wages – meaning the prices of new housing is going up, too, thanks to immigration restrictions.
