2016 Sales Data for Carlisle, Concord, Lincoln, Sudbury, Wayland, & Weston
There are lots of year’s end lists out there as we bid adieu to 2016. Here, we’re looking at basic averages across the six market towns we track. In descending order of most expensive housing per square foot, here’s the 2016 data:
- In Weston, 140 houses sold, it took them on average 107 days to receive an offer and sold for an average of $1,895,571, which works out to $387 per square foot.
- In Lincoln, 56 houses sold. They took 74 days to receive an offer, and they sold for an average of $1,308,499 which worked out to $353 per square foot.
- In Concord, 221 houses sold in 2016. They took, on average, 62 days to receive an offer and sold for an average of $1,162,869 which was very close to Lincoln’s average price per square foot: $357.
- In Wayland, 198 houses sold. They took 49 days to sell and sold on average for $835,733 which worked out to $299 per square foot.
- Carlisle had 94 houses sell in 2016 which took an average of 68 days to sell. Their average sale price was $972,267, which worked out to $265 per square foot.
- Sudbury had 253 houses sell in 2016 which took an average 47 days to sell. They sold on average for $774,352, which was only $254 per square foot.
Inventory Analysis
But there is some other interesting information about each of these individual markets. There is no way to know whether this is the nadir for any individual market’s inventory, but typically that low point is now-ish: the new year. However, when you consider the ratio of houses currently on the market to the number that sold over the entire year 2016, is a big difference between the lowest (Wayland: 16/198 or .08) and the highest (Weston: 66/140 or .47). This would indicate less competition for sellers looking to list in the spring of 2017 in Wayland, and thus higher prices should be expected. We would not expect prices to be pushed up by demand in Weston, where instead there is a lot of competition existing in the market already.
After Wayland, the next lowest inventory compared to the number of houses that sold last year is Concord: 29 houses are still on, but 221 single family houses sold in 2016, so Concord’s ratio is .13. Sudbury has the next lowest relative inventory: 39 houses on, 253 sold = .15. Carlisle is next, with 16 on the market and 94 sold, .17. Lincoln, which feels particularly low, has 12 houses currently available, and had only 56 sell in 2016 (.21) which is still far, far lower than Weston.
It is a true generality that higher priced houses take longer to sell because fewer buyers seek higher priced houses, so Weston may not see prices fall – instead their inventory tends to take much longer to sell but continue to sell for higher prices per square foot compared to neighbors. It’s why averages can be deceiving, for example even though the average days to offer for Concord houses was higher, 62 days compared to Wayland’s 49 and Sudbury’s 47, demand is still very high in Concord and inventory is very low.
The best news here over all is that this low level of inventory bodes well for sellers for a strong spring market, as we’ve seen in the past few years. Happy 2017, everyone!