Housing Market Report MA February 2012

Let’s keep this short and sweet. I often have a conversation with buyers where I need to demonstrate the distinction between national real estate market trends as reported on the major news networks, websites and even real estate associations and local market trends. All real estate trends, values and entire markets are local and distinct from each other. If you average a huge number of markets, you may get an overall sense of how the real estate sector of the economy is performing as a whole but you will get no sense at all of how local values or sales volume is performing in any specific area market. In many recent cases buyers have approached me with the belief that because “real estate is down 18%” as reported on the news, they should then be able to get low ball offers accepted in their preferred eastern MA town. Meanwhile that town, lets say Beverly or Manchester By the Sea, have in fact shown steady growth in both sales volume as well as average sale price and show no signs that prices are inflated or even particularly flexible. It all depends on what’s happening in a specific, local area.

That notwithstanding, today the MA Association of Realtors got me off the hook for that conversation at least for a little while. They announced that January 2012 new contracts signed for the purchase of single family homes in MA are up nearly 40% over January 2011 with new contracts for condo purchases up nearly 26%. Let’s face it, I really don’t need to explain this one. Many specific areas have shown growth and dynamic activity for months or even years now, but the entire state is also looking good even when averaging in areas with continued and lasting difficulty with both values and sales volume. It’s also worth noting that this is the ninth straight month that MA as a whole has shown growth in new contracts to purchase. With interest rates still under 4%, things are looking good for prospective buyers OR sellers. Contact me if doing either!