Bay State home sales down, prices hit January high
Single-family home sales were down a third in Massachusetts last month but the median price of the few homes that sold set the alltime high for January, a dynamic that analysts at The Warren Group said reflects how few homes are available in the Bay State.
The 2,379 homes sold here last month represented a decrease of 32.6% from January 2022 and a drop of 38.3% compared to January 2021, The Warren Group said. Meanwhile, the median sale price of $499,000 is up 0.8% from a year ago and 11.9% from two years ago.
“The lack of inventory in the housing market continued to add upward pressure to the median singlefamily home price. The 2,379 single-family home sales marked the fewest number of transactions for the month of January since 2011 and the lack of inventory is mostly to blame,” Cassidy Norton, associate publisher and director of media relations for The Warren Group, said.
“Add in the fact that interest rates are nearly double what they were a year ago and the rising cost of consumer goods, and we can expect sales numbers to continue their downward trend in the coming months,” she said.
The Massachusetts housing market showed signs of a cooldown at the end of 2022 after two years of double-digit increases in prices and inventory that couldn’t keep up with demand. The Warren Group said last month it expects that to be the theme of 2023 because homes in Massachusetts cost more than buyers are willing to spend, inventory is drying up and rising mortgage rates make a purchase even more costly.
The story was similar for the condominium market. Last month’s 1,178 condo sales were down 27.9% from last January and the median sale price spiked 9.2% year-over-year to $480,500 — also a new record for the month of January.
“Historically, condos were a more affordable alternative to single-family homes, but that doesn’t appear to be the case any longer,” Norton said.
Gov. Maura Healey declared high housing costs “unacceptable for our people, our businesses and our state’s future” in her inaugural address and is expected next month to file long-promised legislation to create a standalone secretary of housing, splitting it off from the current Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
Nationally, the picture was similar, with lower inventory and sale numbers in January against slightly higher prices.
U.S. home sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million properties last month, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s the slowest annual pace since October 2010, when the housing market was still reeling from the 2008 foreclosure crisis.
January’s sales cratered by nearly 37% from a year earlier and slipped 0.7% from December.
The median price of a home, however, edged up 1.3% from January last year to $359,000. That’s the slowest annual increase in home prices since February 2012. The median home price nationally is down around 13% since it peaked in June last year.