Happy Friday!
I'm back again for a hyper-local housing market update, because the national market trends don’t always match the Boston market trends. If you have read through my previous blogs this topic might start to sound redundant, so I'll try and change up some thoughts/data points this round, and keep it brief.
It's time again to ask the question: Is Our Housing Market Crashing? And I feel confident now in saying, at the moment, it is not.
All data below is for what we’re calling “Greater Boston” (Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville), condos & single-family homes, pulled from MLSPin.
Which market is the outlier—this year or last?
There's been a lot of talk about how the number of homes sold has dropped significantly. Yes, the number of homes sold this fall is at its lowest point in the last 5 years, but I also think we're feeling a bit of whiplash from last year, making this feel more dramatic.
The graph above shows the total number of sales for each year since 2018 (this year's data goes up to the end of November at the moment). You can see how insane 2021 was. Personally, I've never experienced a housing market like that in my career. To me, 2021 is the outlier of a market, not now.
When we compare current numbers to last year, of course, it's going to feel dramatic. The number of sales YTD is down nearly 28% compared to last year. However, we're actually up slightly (before even closing out the year) when we compare to 2020, and only down 6.2% compared to 2019.
While the transaction count is at its lowest point since February of 2021, the overall cycle for the year is quite normal, as you can see from the chart above. I would anticipate another couple of months of low transaction count with a lift in March.
Prices are rising!
If you have been concerned about home values, here is some good news! The last 3 months have seen an upward trend in home sale values. Not only did the month-over-month median sale price in greater Boston go up another 1.9%, but we're up 4.1% from this period last year.
And while home prices are lower right now than they were in the peak of the spring market, that is normal and quite cyclical. What's important to me is that prices for the fall are up, and prices overall YTD are up (see below).
So in summary, as interest rates went up, many home buyers were pushed out of the market, but that did not push sale prices down.
Have any questions about any specific data points, or other factors not in this email? Shoot me a message and let's nerd out on some data!
- Sam