Massachusetts’ Q1 Residential Data Points to a Slowdown in Sales

The Massachusetts first quarter residential real estate data is out from MLS and it shows that homes continue to hold on to their value (good news for sellers), but are only rising very slightly in price and sales are taking longer to happen (good news for buyers).The first quarter of the year (January – March) is usually a slow time for selling or buying a home in snowy Massachusetts. And yet, prices have continued to rise, albeit more slowly than during the peak pandemic years. In Q1 of 2023, the median sale price came down to the list price, after having exceeded it for two and a half years. Pre-pandemic, median sales price was below list price. The median sale price for a SFH in Massachusetts this quarter was $535,000 a 39% increase over 2019’s median price for the same quarter, but only a 1.9% increase over Q1 in 2022. Q1 of 2022 turned out to be the fastest of the past five years for sales to happen, and in 2023, the average time for a home to sell is now well over a month statewide.The news is about the same on the condo front. Median sales price for the first quarter of the year were $1,000 above asking price, which is negligible. The median sales price of condos in Mass is now $500,000 which is an increase of 36% since 2019 and an increase of 6% from the same time last quarter.The days on the market for condos is also longer than the rush in early 2022, with condos also taking more than a month to sell now.With mortgage rates still very high (and more than double what they were until September 2022), sales are slowing. The sales volume has decreased markedly in Q1 compared to the pandemic year and is only slightly higher than Q1 of 2019. The residential real estate market in Massachusetts seems to be stabilizing in terms of time on market, offer prices and volume of sales. The prices, however, are remaining at the heights they reached during the pandemic, which makes it hard for first-time buyers to enter the real estate market. Lending rates are a further impediment to new buyers.