How is the 2016 housing market taking shape in Boston?
The Greater Boston housing market is a place of very positive highs and very negative lows, a varied arena that simultaneously accommodates every point on the housing spectrum.
That reality is driven home month after month by the Greater Boston Association of Realtors’ (GBAR) monthly reports, and the association’s February report was no exception.
Here are the five most notable trends GBAR spotlighted:
1. Home Sale Boom – For both the single-family and condo markets, home sales have gotten off to a very strong start in 2016. Year-over-year in February, single-family sales rose 10.3 percent, while condo sales rose 2.9 percent; year-to-date, sales were stronger, jumping 14.7 percent for single family and 13.9 percent for condos.
2. Contract Signings Galore – Even more positive were contract signings in Boston’s market. Pending single-family sales soared 50.2 percent year-over-year, finishing the month at 957; meanwhile, pending condo sales rose 54.3 percent to 875.
3. Prices and Affordability – Although sales rose, prices and affordability continued to move in dispiriting directions. On the single-family side, median sales price in February rose 10.6 percent from Feb. 2015 to $520,000, pushing GBAR’s Affordability Index down 12 percent. On the condo side, things were not much better, with prices rising 6.4 percent to $447,000 and affordability falling 7.8 percent.
4. The Inventory Crisis – The word “crisis” is thrown around often when Boston’s housing inventory is brought up, and GBAR’s new report reaffirms that such wording is not hyperbole. The single-family inventory now stands at just 1.8 months (after falling 5.3 percent year-over-year), and condo inventory is even lower at 1.3 months; at the end of February, there were only 1,194 condos on the market for all of Greater Boston.
5. New Listing Salvation? – Although inventory continues to fall, GBAR did record very strong increases in new listings on both yearly and year-to-date measurements. For single-family homes, new listings rose 75.3 percent from Feb. 2015 and 36.5 percent year-to-date, while for condos, new listings rose 49.6 and 30.8 percent, respectively. New listings are not the end all be all – inventory still declined in February, even with those aforementioned increases – but such jumps are nothing to discredit.