YOUR Massachusetts Real Estate Market Update for August 2024
It’s time to throw the caution flag in the condo market. It looks like last month was just an outlier after all. This was a big month. We won’t throw around the word historical… But there are some issues that we now need to keep our eyes on to see if it’s a trend or a one off.
The decrease in interest rates may just be coming at the right time as this market may be in the midst of needing a little bit of a bail out.
And while the Single Family market is performing better than the condo market… There could be a couple warning signs there as well!
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Let’s start with Single Families
In July of 2024, we saw 4,035 Single Family homes sell for an average sales price of $855 thousand dollars.
The 4,035 Single Families that sold in July was 10.1% more than last year when we saw 3,664 homes sold.
The sales levels have stayed pretty much in line with 2023. Some months we are a little below and other months we are a little above.
With this month’s sales levels, the year to date sales in the state of Massachusetts has increased to 2.2% as we have now sold 20,632 units compared to the 20,193 units at this point in 2023.
I don’t think this is much to be concerned about at this point, but I do think it’s worth keeping our eyes on. I for one am happy that the rate of home prices increasing is decreasing. I just don’t want it to happen overnight. I want it to be gradual.
We recorded a 6.3% year over year increase in Single Family property values. Again, I like the trendline. Just don’t want this to correct too fast which could cause an over correction. I want it to be like a plane landing. Nice and smooth. 3% is a home appreciation rate of beauty!
With seven months down, home prices in Massachusetts are up 7.8% year over year. The slight pullbacks continue. We were at 8.8% two months ago, 8.1% last month and now 7.8% this month.
I know buyers don’t feel like they are winning right now, but they are when compared to what buyers were going through the last 3 years.
Now onto the yearly sales comparison levels.
This month’s rebound is welcome. As we know, sales levels are up from last year. The 4,035 homes sold puts us between the sales levels of July 2011 and 2012.
Home sales continue to not be great. But that all could be changing very soon with all of this talk about tumbling interest rates! Oh… And if that does happen… Interest rates go down and sales go up… Then be ready for some big home price gains!
I’ve said it before. Sales levels are going to bounce around for a while… Or at least until rates fall and the economy slightly approves.
You can really see how big of a rebound this month is on the positive side when compared to the downside of last month.
That’s 49 consecutive months of year over year home price increases.
As I have said before, the amount of the home price increases are decreasing. That is the only thing we need to keep our eye on.
But if I was a betting man, I would bet that we will hit 5 consecutive years of home price gains. The only thing standing in the way is inventory, so let’s take a look at that!
We ended the month with 5,045 single family homes on the market.
Year over year, inventory levels are up an astounding 39.6%!
These higher inventory levels plus the seasonal market makes it a phenomenal time for value seeker buyers to find their perfect property.
I think this graph really does a great job illustrating what this year has been about on the inventory side. We spent the first four months of the year going toe to toe with 2023’s inventory levels.
Then inventory went on a run and has settled right in between the inventory levels of 2021 and 2022. This should be welcomed news for home buyers as we now have 1,464 more single family homes on the market at the end of July 2024 then we did at the end of July of 2023. And 391 fewer houses on the market than July of 2022.
New Listings were also up year over year. We listed 4,219 Single Family homes in Massachusetts in July of 2024. This was a 11.6% increase when compared to July of 2023.
While the pickup in new listing activity is great news. Very welcomed news actually… It is still far short of the levels from 2017 to 2022.
Price reductions were also up year over year.
In July of 2024 we saw a 34.4% increase in price reductions throughout Massachusetts. There were 363 Single Family homes that did a price reduction in July.
Quick recap… So sales in the Single Family market were up by 10% while inventory was up by 40%. The number of new listings were up 12% when compared to last year’s numbers while we saw a 34% increase in price reductions for June of 2024.
And just like that. The historical home price trend continues. It looks like last month will be the pricing peak for SIngle Family homes in Massachusetts. Do not. I repeat. Do not get baited into headlines that say housing prices are down month over month. Always only look at year over year data.
As we talked about earlier, the $855,000 average sales price means that home prices in Massachusetts are up 6.3% year over year and 7.8% year to date.
We have the condo market and the Multi-Family market up next…But first, any chance you can do me a huge favor as it helps play with the youtube algorithm? Can you hit that like button? It just makes a huge difference to me as well as my channel.
We saw 1,666 condos close in Massachusetts in month of July for an average sales price of $735k thousand dollars.
Let’s start with the sales data…
Sales levels were up by 1.2% year over year. The 1,666 condos sold in Massachusetts for the month of July was compared to the 1,647 units that sold in July of 2023.
The little bump in sales volume helped decrease the total year over year sales level decline. Last month we were down 5.3% year over year. In July that number improved to 3.4% with 9,461 condos sold compared to the 9,795 in the first seven months of 2023.
After two months of year over year sales declines, this 1% increase helps buck the trend. I think this is just really showing for both the Single Family and Condo market that sales levels have bottomed out. This decrease in interest rates is about to push sales levels in all markets.
Our sales levels were pretty much on par with July of 2023. We would have to go back to July of 2012 in order to find another time where sales levels were in the general ballpark of this year’s numbers.
Inventory growth continues for the month of July in the condo market. The 2,722 condos on the market in Massachusetts is 30.7% higher than the inventory levels in June of 2023.
We were just slightly below the inventory levels of 2021. Again, I see this inventory growth as a short term enjoyment with buyers if we are truly entering a cycle of interest rate cuts.
Buyers. Act quickly!
Can you even see the blue line?
On the last monday of July we had 722 more condos on the market compared to this time in 2023, 111 more when compared to 2022 and 64 more than 2021.
The amount of new listings were also up slightly with 1,822 new condo listings hitting the market. The 77 additional new listings when compared to July of 2023 represents a 4.4% increase in new listings in Massachusetts for the month of July.
Meanwhile we saw a 45% increase in the amount of condos that saw price reductions in Massachusetts in July of 2024. In the big picture of things, I mean 135 condos are not that many for an entire month.
As a year over year comparison… Sales were up 1.2 percent and new listings were up by 4.4% when compared to 2023. Meanwhile inventory was up by 30.7% with the number of price reductions increasing by 45.2% year over year.
Yes. Condo prices were down year over year. But I remember in July of 2023 saying that I thought that month’s data was an outlier. The following months would prove us right. So in other words. Don’t get too caught up in this data.
The average sales price of $735k was 5.2% lower than the average sales price in July of 2023 when it was $775 thousand dollars.
This is the first time we have had a year over year price decrease since June of 2023 when it was a negative .23% year over year average sale price decline. We would have to go back to January of 2021 to find a time when home price declines were higher than it was in July. At that time it was a negative 8.52% sales price decline.
Again. Don’t get too invested in these numbers. I am always going to give you the data, but it’s just a little disingenuous because of the time period that July of 2024 is being compared to.
Year to date, condo prices in Massachusetts are up by 2.9%. This number was 4.6% in June so there is no doubt that this month’s weak data affected the market data as a whole.
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Now onto the Multi-Family market…
And the party in the multi-family market continues! In July of 2024 we saw 508 Multi-Family units sell for an average sales price of $949k.
It’s been a pretty consistent straight line increase since February in regards to the amount of sales in the Multi-family market in Massachusetts.
The 508 units sold was a 16.3% increase in the year over year sales levels for July.
This means that year over year sales levels are now up by only 6.8%.
The 508 sales level was not awful. It kicked last year’s you know what while our sales levels put us pretty much exactly on par with July of 2012.
It wasn’t an awful month for sales in the multi-family market in Massachusetts.
Inventory continued to grow in the multi-family market. There are currently 768 multi-family properties on the market which means that inventory levels are up by by 95 units or 14.1% year over year.
The amount of additional inventory when compared to 2023 has been pretty consistent over the last couple of months. We have 134 more Multi-Family homes on the market than when compared to 2023 at the end of July.
Meanwhile we listed 10.9% more multi-family properties than we did in 2023. We listed 664 multi-family homes in July of 2024 which is compared to the 601 Multi-Family homes in July of 2023.
What a month for multi-families! Year over year, the $949 thousand dollars was 20.1% higher than the levels we recorded in July of 2023.
This chart really puts it all into perspective of how great of a month it was. But even with how great of a month, it still was not the best month of the year! Actually, it wasn’t even close.
Multi-family properties pricing is now up by 13.1% for the first 7 months of 2024.
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