Massachusetts Real Estate Market Update for December 2024
It is hard to believe that we have reached the final market update for 2024. Where has this year gone? It’s been an interesting year from a real estate perspective that has given way to some interesting trends.
Next up is the year end market update and my predictions on what will happen in 2025. We are going to end the year with all three market segments up, but with some definite headwinds facing the marketplace.
If you are wanting to hear about the Massachusetts Real Estate Market data for Single Family Homes, Condos and Multi-Family properties… Then you are in the right place.
Real quick, my name is Jeff Chubb and I am recovering Investment Banker turned Real Estate Agent and real estate investor that has sold more than a 1,000 homes. If you have any questions about the real estate market, then know I am here to help. Don’t want to sell a house the “traditional” way and deal with real estate agents, showings, open houses, repairs, staging… And the list goes on and on. Then know We Buy Houses in Massachusetts.
Thinking about buying or selling a house? Then please reach out as it would be great to chat about your real estate goals.
Let’s start with Single Families
In November of 2024, we saw 3,196 Single Family homes sell for an average sales price of $792 thousand dollars.
So far, the last quarter of 2024 is going great from a sales perspective. That is now two months of year over year increased sales! The 3,196 Single Families that sold in November was 1.7% more than last year when we saw 3,143 homes sold.
Yes, it wasn’t last month’s 12% increase, but let’s take what we can get! Positive news from the sales side is positive news.
Adding in this month’s sales levels, the year to date sales levels increases jumped up a tiny bit more going from 2.94% last month to 2.99% this month as we have now sold 34,574 units compared to the 33,569 units at this point in 2023.
It’s safe to say that any talk of the market slipping has been put to rest and that the uptick last month was not an outlier! In November we recorded a 8.2% year over year increase in Single Family property values. This seems to be a pretty nice way to close out 2024!
With eleven months down, home prices in Massachusetts are up 7% year over year. 2024 is going to be another great year… For homesellers that is.
Now onto the yearly sales comparison levels.
Last year aside, our sales levels of 3,196 units put us kind of in line with November of 2011. It’s just that November of 2012 was such a kick butt month.
As I have said, we have embraced the suck when it comes to sales levels. This is more of the same, but with another breath of fresh air.
But I continue to not see anything out there that will flip the switch where we will get a ton of sales pushed to the market. The only thing that would do that is if interest rates dropped like a rock. And I continue to not see a scenario where that happens.
Talking about trends, we are now at 5 consecutive months of year over year sales increases. As it stands, it looks like we will have only 3 months in 2024 where we had year over year sales declines.
Before January, we had 30 consecutive months of year over year sales declines. So sales declines of 3 out of the last 11 months is a big improvement!
And that is now 53 consecutive months of year over year home price increases. As a spoiler alert, when talking about predictions in 2025, then this trend will be one that I expect to continue.
5 consecutive years or 60 months of pricing gains… Here we come!
But it’s all about inventory levels. So let’s take a look at inventory. And the recent inventory trend has me scratching my head a little for what could happen for 2025.
Second month in a row that I can say this… This is a five year high for monthly inventory levels. We ended the month with 4,515 Single Family homes on the market.
Year over year, inventory levels are up 6%!
We had 126 more homes on the market at the end of November in 2024 when compared to November of 2020. which is compared to November of 2020. So that means that inventory levels are 2.9% higher than 2020 inventory levels. This 2.9% is down a bit from last month’s 4.1%.
Here is the piece that is interesting. The last data captures the last day of the month, while this chart is always a Monday to Monday comparison. So essentially it’s the first Monday of December for the last four years.
And for the first Monday of December we actually crossed the 2022 levels. We now have 358 more single family homes on the market when compared to the same point in 2023 and now have 62 more single family houses on the market when compared to 2022.
We haven’t had more inventory on the market in 2022 since the end of August. This is the interesting piece of data that has me scratching my head as we are getting ready to walk into 2025.
And here seems to be the reason why inventory levels are down so much. All of a sudden, New Listings dropped off a cliff. We listed 2,606 Single Family homes in Massachusetts in November of 2024. This was a 13.2% decrease when compared to November of 2023. For comparison purposes, last month we listed 17% more houses than compared to October of 2023 and 18% more when we did the September year over year comparison.
Price reductions also dropped significantly.
In November of 2024 we saw a decrease of 27.4% with 238 price reductions.
Quick recap… So sales in the Single Family market were up by 1.7% while inventory was up by 6%. The number of new listings were down by 13.2% when compared to last year’s numbers while seeing a 27.4% decrease in price reductions for November of 2024.
The $792,000 average sales price means that home prices in Massachusetts are up 8.2% year over year and 7% year to date. Yes, the trendline of prices is going down, but that is what we see every year.
The List to sale price ratio for November of 2024 was 99.9%. That’s pretty darn good and it’s natural for the trendline to decrease. But the interesting take away is that in June we fell below the 2023 levels and haven’t looked back. This is a sign of a weaker market… But still a pretty darn good one.
There are many reasons that a homeowner sells their property to an ibuyer instead of the traditional way. Those reasons could be because of financial distress like foreclosure or a loss of a job or an inherited house, but could also be thanks to a slowing market. The slowing market could be a reason that we have seen an increase in searches for We Buy Houses Massachusetts!
Our days on market came in at 37 for the month of November. We crossed the levels seen in 2023 in August and like the List to Sale Price ratio we have not looked back!
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 1,277 condos close in Massachusetts for the month of November with an average sales price of $685k thousand dollars.
Let’s start with the sales data…
Sales levels were down by 3.1% year over year. The 1,277 condos sold in Massachusetts for the month of November was compared to the 1,318 units that sold in November of 2023.
Year to date we have closed 15,124 condos compared to the 15,512 in the first eleven months of 2023.
This means that we have seen year over year sales declines for 7 out of the last 11 months. Similar story to the Single Family market. We had 25 months of year over year sales declines before this year. So even if we get a month here or there with higher year over year sales levels then lets take that as a win.
Aside from last year, the 1,277 units sold was within the range of November of 2014. That’s a pretty good showing for the second to last month of the year! But this is down from last year.
Another four year high for inventory levels in the condo market! The 2,562 condos on the market in Massachusetts is 7.4% higher than the inventory levels in November of 2023.
And 406 units above the November of 2021 inventory levels!
We had 208 more condos on the market when compared to the end of November of 2023, 198 more when compared to 2022 and 430 more than 2021. All of these levels tightened a bit when compared to last month’s analysis.
Just like the Single Family market, the condo market new listings were down year over year as well. The amount of new listings were down with 1,136 new condo listings hitting the market. The 183 fewer new listings when compared to November of 2023 represents a 13.8% decrease in new listings activity in Massachusetts for the month of November.
And we saw a decrease in the amount of condos that saw price reductions in Massachusetts as there were only 73 price adjustments in November. This is 37 units or 33.6% fewer than when compared to November of 2023.
As a year over year comparison… Sales were down 3.1 percent and new listings were down by 13.9% when compared to 2023. Meanwhile inventory was up by 7.4% with the number of price reductions down by 33.6% year over year.
A couple additional stats is that the list to sale price ratio for the month of November was 99.2% while the days on market was 40. As a year over year comparison, this means that the List to Sale price ratio is down .87 percent from last year’s recording of 100.06% and up 1 day on the days on market count as there were 39 days on market in November of 2023.
Great news as this month broke the four month price declines.
The average sales price of $685k was 3.5% higher than the average sales price in November of 2023 when it was $661 thousand dollars.
Those four months of pricing declines don’t look great. Good to see some positive pricing gains on the board though. The big news to me is that I felt that we were flirting with negative pricing territory for the year… The sales price increase this month ends that debate.
Year to date, condo prices in Massachusetts are up by 1.7%. This number was 4.6% in June, 2.9% in July, 2.4% in August and 2% in September and 1.6% in October. Happy to see this leveling off.
We will eke it out this year. But this will make for an interesting 2025.
And now for my very quick shameless plug. If you are thinking about buying or selling a home, then reach out to me today as I would be honored to help guide you through the process.
Now onto the Multi-Family market…
Another good month in the Multi-Family market. In November of 2024 we saw 419 Multi-Family units sell for an average sales price of $842k.
The 419 units sold was 2 units or a .5% increase in the year over year sales levels for November.
This means that year over year sales levels are now up by 6.5%.
The 419 units sold puts us right in line with last year when we sold 417 units.
Inventory in the Multi market fell a little bit. There are currently 748 multi-family properties on the market which means that inventory levels are down by 52 units or 6.5% year over year.
Very interesting. We spent pretty much the entire year above the 2023 levels and now we have taken a turn and are in negative territory. To put it in perspective, only two months ago we had 57 additional units on the market.
Like the other market segments, here lies our culprit for the decreased inventory levels. We listed 18.4% fewer multi-family properties than we did in 2023. We listed 486 multi-family homes in November of 2024 which is compared to the 543 Multi-Family homes in November of 2023.
Year over year, the $842 thousand dollars was 9.6 percent higher than the levels we recorded in November of 2023.
The 9.6% is more in line with what we have been seeing throughout the year.
Multi-family properties pricing is now up by 11% for the first 11 months of 2024. It is true, the price appreciation level slipped slightly, but man has this been a good year for multi-family property owners!
It’s now time to start putting our focus on 2025. And there are some big questions. What’s going to happen to interest rates? Are they going to go up or down or more of the same? Will this new administration change anything in the real estate market? Will they somehow stick to their promise of getting more affordable housing supply on the market? How do the new policies affect the overall health of the economy and thereby our real estate market? Will inventory continue to increase and thereby pricing become softer… And dare I say it… Dip into negative territory? Sales levels, will they be up or down or will they fall in line with 2024?
Want to talk about your personal real estate needs?
Again, it’s Jeff Chubb. If you are looking for more information on how to sell my house fast by us giving you a cash offer on your house and buying it in as-is condition. Then please reach out as we are here to help!
Until next time.