Buyer’s market in the Boston area? Perhaps so.
It looks increasingly like a buyer’s market in the Boston area.
Such a trend would’ve been laughable a short while ago, but new numbers for October from real estate research firm the Warren Group and the Greater Boston Association of Realtors seem to confirm the shift.
Case in point: Detached single-family sales cratered in October, according to the statistics, which analyzed closed deals in Boston proper and 63 municipalities in its orbit. There were a total of 669 detached single-family (a.k.a. house) sales in Greater Boston in October, the lowest sum for the month in more than two decades and a 38.7 percent decline from October 2018.
As for condo sales, those were down 31 percent annually, to 553—the lowest October total since 2010, when 773 condos traded in the Boston area. Condo sales were also down more than 30 percent from September.
“A late summer slowdown in the market is not uncommon, but this year it was more pronounced,” Jim Major, president of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors and an agent with Century 21 North East in Woburn, said in a statement.
More choice is behind the paltry sales numbers, as properties languish on the sales market longer and potential buyers watch prices fluctuate. Those buyers have basically adopted “a wait-and-see attitude until prices settle,” Major said.