Wicked Local
While a dearth of housing stock across the state has heightened competition among buyers, this reality is nothing new in Newton, according to local realtors.
Steve Medeiros, the president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, said the statewide shortage has been long in the making.
The decreasing inventory creates a ripple effect across the state’s housing market: As more buyers compete for fewer properties, the closing prices increase and the length of the sales period shortens.
In Newton and the surrounding area, “There’s always been a very high demand” for houses and condos to buy, said Michael Spurr from Newton Centre Associates at Keller Williams. He has also seen prices going up, as well as bidding wars in the city.
Wicked Local
Looking to buy a single-family home in Brookline? You’ll likely need a few things: A good realtor, quick instincts and at least $1 million lined up in financing.
In 2020, 136 single-family property sales closed in town, according to data provided by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. Only 11 of those homes sold for under $1 million, per the MLS Property Information Network for Massachusetts. The average sale price for homes listed under $1 million was $942,518 – about $50,000 above average listing price.
Recently, greater Boston has seen a cutthroat seller’s market emerge as the result of low housing inventory and high buyer demand. But for already competitive markets like Brookline, those trends have only underscored existing market conditions.
The Wellesley Townsman
Wellesley is a popular place to live: Top-rated schools, big houses, close enough to the city to allow easy access to entertainment and restaurants and open space for walking and running.
The problem: It may be hard to find that house of your dreams. We began 2020 with a small and shrinking inventory, but after the pandemic struck, the number of urban dwellers who wanted to head for the suburbs increased considerably, according to Elaine Bannigan, co-founder and owner of Pinnacle Residential Properties and author of the Pinnacle Report. Things that quickly became important were having a backyard with a nice area to garden, relax and play or even have a dog (there has been a big increase in puppy acquisitions, too!), as well as a strong desire for more interior space for home office, exercise, and room for a family to have some separation. Urban condos were out. Suburban living was in.
Home prices are soaring, and there’s virtually no inventory on the market. It’s a phenomenon not at all unique to Central Massachusetts.
Single-family home prices had already been on a long, steady climb across Massachusetts, which has one of the country’s most expensive residential real estate markets. The coronavirus pandemic, despite the coinciding recession, has only made prices rise higher still.
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Mike DeLuca, the president of the Realtor Association of Central Massachusetts
“COVID just magnified it 10 times,” said Mike DeLuca, the president of the Realtor Association of Central Massachusetts.
Few areas of the residential real estate sales market have been untouched by the pandemic.
Availability is the new affordability Jon Gorey
Realtors and housing experts are warning of a difficult spring for first-time home buyers. Prices already had climbed for seven straight years before skyrocketing during the pandemic. With buyer demand far outpacing the number of homes for sale, median home prices were up 12.9 percent in December compared with the year before, marking the 106th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains, according to the National Association of Realtors.
And incomes haven’t kept pace with those fast-rising home prices. Even before the pandemic, “prices were about 4.3 times higher than the median household income,” said Alex Hermann, senior research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. That basic measure of housing affordability, already at its worst level since 2006, almost certainly rose again in 2020. “Nationally, price-to-income ratios have risen for eight straight years,” he said.