The foreclosure crisis bruised the Massachusetts real estate market for a few years, but today, the state is experiencing a mild recovery with July home sales closer to the 2005 peak and inventory levels down over last year, real estate analysts said Thursday.
“We have been experiencing a pretty solid or at least a recognizable bump in sales during the past seven months of the year,” said Cory Hopkins, editorial director of The Warren Group.
The publication released a report showing Massachusetts with 4,979 single-family home sales in July, up 27% from 3,922 last year and closer to the peak of 6,672 sales set in 2005.
“We have kind of transitioned back into a seller’s market which is something that we haven’t been for a while,” Hopkins told HousingWire.
And while the median price has plummeted from a peak of $355,000 in 2005 to roughly $287,000 in the first part of 2012, Hopkins sees some devaluation as helpful since it encourages first-time and move-up buyers to enter the market.
“A median price of $355,000 for a single-family home made Massachusetts one of the more expensive states in the country,” Hopkins recalls.
He says in terms of price, July home prices were relatively flat compared to last year. “We kind of have been bouncing along the bottom in terms of price,” he added.
The Boston housing market — one of the state’s tighter real estate markets — saw home resale inventories fall 5% from August and 39% from a year ago with only 1,227 properties on the market today, according to Movoto.
The median list price in Boston is now $419,900, up from $414,900 a month ago and from $395,000 two years ago.
Homes are now spending 59 days on the market based on the median wait price, which is improved from 79 days on the Boston market last year, Movoto added.
The percentage of Boston sales classified as distressed properties has hovered around 2% for the past six months, Movoto concluded.
kpanchuk@housingwire.com
