Top Spots to Live in Greater Boston in 2021
Even amid a pandemic, these 24 communities saw the biggest leaps in house prices north, south, and west of Boston, plus in the city itself.
By Jon Gorey Globe Correspondent,Updated April 21, 2021, 7:15 a.m.
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Adobe Stock images; Globe staff illustration
Despite the physical, emotional, and economic trauma unleashed by COVID-19, Boston-area home sales and prices throttled even higher in 2020 â and have shown no signs of slowing down this spring, as a full year of de facto house arrest has left many people itching for a change of scenery.
But the pandemic appears to have fundamentally changed the way we think about our homes and where we want to live. With everything from offices to bars shuttered, downtown living was stripped of its many perks. And with stifling rush-hour traffic temporarily removed from the equation, buyers ventured farther outside the city in search of more living space, both inside and out.
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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.
Bidding Wars Heat Up in Boston Apr 14, 2021 | Reprints | Print
A new report from Redfin suggests bidding wars increased in frequency in Greater Boston as the spring market heated up last month.
Nearly 3 in every 4 offers (73.6 percent) made by a buyer’s agent for the discount brokerage in the five-county metro area faced competition from other buyers, the brokerage said. That’s up from a mere 65.5 percent in February.
Nationally, those figures are 64 percent and 62.1 percent, respectively, making March the 11th consecutive month in which more than half of Redfin offers encountered bidding wars, and the second in a row where that figure exceeded 60 percent.
Rents for Boston s luxury apartments have dropped boston.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from boston.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Cameron Sperance Boston.com correspondent April 6, 2021 7:07 pm
COVID-proofing and a crowded weekend open house at a coveted property seem mutually exclusive, yet area realtors emphasize they are going above and beyond to keep everyone involved safe.
The Greater Boston housing crunch didn’t slow down for the pandemic, and realtors are staying busy with home viewings. But now they have to build in more time and a marketing budget around cleaning and showing homes with health guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in mind.
“I was on phone calls for five hours a day talking about how we help our realtor community come out of the pandemic,’’ said Melvin A. Vieira Jr., a realtor with Re/Max Destiny who handled government affairs during the early months of the pandemic for the Greater Boston Association of Realtors.