It has been a wild ride this year for us, with a peak of 5 active listings at once, all in Lincoln. It has been less wild for many area sellers; many houses need price reductions or renovations to sell. After a slow-to-start spring that felt overrun with buyers who then didn’t make offers, we feel the general summer quietness creeping in. The spring was impacted by national news stories projecting up-ticks in mortgage rates that never materialized, and we felt for the first time the cap on mortgage interest and SALT tax deduction on federal income tax filing. Here’s a market snapshot for a few local markets to give you a sense of the trends.
Lincoln
As of July 4, twenty-nine single-family houses have accepted offers or sold in 2019. Those homes had a median list price of $1,119,000. Ten of those homes accepted offers immediately at or above asking. Thirty-five houses are currently for sale, with a median list price of $1,995,000. Last year on this date, there were 20 single-family houses for sale. Currently, the dollar volume of single-family houses for sale is $73,908,800 up from $41,417,400 last year at this time. The market is heavily saturated in the high end, with 17 houses listed over $2M, compared to nine last year. More about Lincoln
Concord
Though the stats are less pronounced, you see the same trends: the days on the market for houses on the market today versus this day a year ago are down: 100 days on average for the 99 houses on the market right now, versus 128 days on the market for the 84 houses that were on the market on this day in 2018. And the median list price of single-family houses has gone up from $1,522,500 last year to $1,689,000. There’s a total of over $30M more total volume on the market in Concord this year than there was last year at this time. More about Concord
Wayland
Wayland also has many more single-family houses on the market this year (37) than last year (22) at this time and thought the median home price is down to $919,000 from $1,187,500 last year at this time, Wayland also has more houses on at the upper end, too. The total volume listed for sale right now is up to $44,719,598 from only $29,780,899 last year on the 4th of July! And, unlike Concord, Wayland homes for sale right now have been on the market for an average of 74 days versus 72 last year. More about Wayland
Weston
Inventory is way up in Weston too, 112 single-family homes are on the market now up from 82 last year. And while Weston has seen a decrease in the median list price to $2,542,500 from $2,749,500 last year, the days on the market is down to 135 for those on the market from 153 days for those that were on last year. The total volume is up to $361,561,497 from $303,714,598 last year at this time. More about Weston
Lexington
Similar to the trends across the region, the number of houses on the market is higher this year than last year, 74 single-family homes are currently on the market in Lexington versus 50 last year. And the days those houses have been on the market is up to an average of 90 compared to 75 days last year. And, like Weston, though the median list price of those houses currently on the market is down compared to last year at this time ($1,822,000 this year down from $2,049,000 last year) because there are so many more houses for sale, the total volume for sale is up: $132,400,000 this year from $101,237,599 in 2018. More about Lexington
Cambridge
For a point of contrast, last year in Cambridge there were 9 single-family houses for sale on July 4, and now there are 19. The prices of those 19 houses are on average higher, so today the total volume is more than three times what it was last year!
Looking ahead
If you consider just Lincoln, Lexington, Concord, Wayland, and Weston, there are 100 more houses on the market than there were last year at this time. There’s also more than $160M more volume than there was last year. We project that the second half of 2019 will see prices trended down slightly across the MetroWest suburbs. We hope that low interest rates and strong national economic indicators will encourage buyers from the high-cost urban rental markets out to the suburbs.