Banner 2020 for massachusetts Real estate, prices and sales finish strong
The surprisingly scorching real estate market of 2020 finished the year on a high note, with a record-setting December.
Massachusetts recorded 6,410 single-family home sales last month, according to real estate analytics firm The Warren Group — that’s the most ever recorded in December and a 28.6 percent increase from December 2019. The median price of a single-family home sold last month surged 14.4 percent year over year, to $455,000, an all-time high for the month.
The 2,545 condo sales recorded statewide in December marked a 20.6 percent increase from a year ago, and the median price of a condo rose 8 percent, to $410,000 — also a record for this time of year.
That big finish gave one last boost to what was already an astounding year in real estate. Despite a titanic plunge in sales activity during the early stages of the pandemic last spring, single-family sales bounced back — notching year-over-year gains of 27 percent or more every month since September, according to Warren Group chief executive Tim Warren.
“I remember arguing with realtors and appraisers who were telling me that everything was going to be fine,” Warren said, recalling last spring. “If you told me back then that by the end of the year the total number of sales would surpass 2019, there’s no way I would have believed you.” Yet there were 61,469 single-family home sales in 2020 compared with 59,178 the year before, a 3.9 percent increase for the year.
Even as parts of the economy collapsed and unemployment soared, demand for what is still a limited supply of homes for sale — along with tantalizingly low mortgage rates — pushed prices upward across Massachusetts. Single-family home prices climbed 11.4 percent for the year, to a median of $445,500. Year-end condo prices climbed 9 percent over 2019, to $415,000, though the total number of condo sales dipped 1.4 percent for the year.
“It seems the more time people spend at home, the more they want to spend ontheir home,” Warren said. “And they’re spending it by fixing up the homes that they have, by buying a second home, or thinking about a different home as their primary home.”