Greater Boston prices are down, inventory is shrinking, and both buyers and sellers seem uncertain about what 2020 will bring.
Declining prices? Check. Slowing construction? Check. More cautious prospective buyers and shrinking inventory? Check and check. The Boston-area housing market is poised to have a much different 2020 compared with the previous few years.
Time was the market scaled only upward, with prices escalating despite a steady pace of new home construction. Bidding wars were common and buying at over the asking price was par for the course.
As 2020 dawns, prices are moderating and the pace of new construction is slowing. At the same time—and not surprisingly—the numbers of both new listings and the inventory in general of available homes for sale have been dropping as have sales themselves.
What seemed once like the surest thing—putting your place on the market in the Boston area at a desired price—seems less sure now.
Sales of both single-families and condos dropped in November compared with the same month in 2018: 16 percent in the case of single-families and 6.8 percent in the case of condos. These are according to the latest numbers from the Greater Boston Association of Realtors and the Warren Group, a real estate research firm.
The same figures—which tracked closed deals in 64 Boston-area municipalities—also showed the numbers of new active listings for condos and single-families were down too in November, and the inventories of available single-families and condos were each static.
Meanwhile, and perhaps most importantly, the median sales prices for both single-families and condos barely budged in November compared with last year. The median condo price was basically the same as last November, at $563,000, and the median single-family was up a mere 2.3 percent, to $599,900.