Could Boston’s strong luxury housing market be slowing down?

Sales prices for Boston’s luxury housing market slipped behind the general marketplace this year, according to a new Redfin analysis of the nation’s luxury markets.

Redfin’s study analyzed the top 5 percent of listings, and according to its research, the average sale price for Boston’s luxury market in 2015’s first quarter was $3.59 million, an 18.7 percent decline from 2014’s first quarter. By comparison, the remaining 95 percent of listings in Boston saw their average sales price rise 0.4 percent to $570,000.

Peter Phinney, a Redfin agent based in Boston, said that precipitous decline was due to the absence of ultra-high-end sales in early 2015.

“While there have been fewer sales at the ultra high end of $5 million plus, the $1 million to $2 million range is as strong as ever,” Phinney said. “Boston occasionally sees homes list above the $3 million mark, but we’re not New York City or San Francisco.”

Furthermore, additional numbers from Redfin’s analysis offered further nuance on Boston’s luxury market. For the top 5 percent of Boston listings, the average days on market in 2015’s first quarter was 109, more than double the 55 days for the remaining 95 percent of listings.

Luxury Real Estate in Boston

One other interesting characteristic of Boston’s luxury housing market is how much more expensive those upper-tier listings are than the remainder of the market.

According to Redfin, listings in the top 5 percent are 6.3 times pricier, which is among the largest disparities in the country – though admittedly, it’s far beyond the 11.6 of Miami Beach.

This graph shows the luxury sales price ratio for the nation’s largest metro areas: