July market report for downtown Boston condos
Although not all good, there's been a more steady beat of positive national economic and real estate news lately (see here, here, here, and here plus the economist survey from the Wall Street Journal below for some examples). Has this carried over yet into the local Boston real estate market, specifically the downtown Boston condo market?
To answer that, here are the sales numbers from July 2009 (compared to 2008 and 2007) for the downtown* Boston condo market:
JULY
| 2009
| 2008 | 2007
| Change from '08
| Change from '07 |
# sales
| 213
| 220
| 193
| -3.2%
| 10.4%
|
Avg $
| $635,040 | $698,114
| $644,994 | -9.0%
| -1.5%
|
Med $
| $520,000
| $535,000
| $508,200 | -2.8%
| 2.3%
|
| Avg $/ft | $639 | $648
| $656
| -1.4%
| -2.6%
|
| DOM | 101
| 89
| 92
| 13.5%
| 9.8%
|
*downtown is made up of the Back Bay, Beacon Hill/West End, South End & Bay Village, Fenway/Kenmore, Midtown, and North End & Waterfront neighborhoods.
As you can see from the numbers, the market is down slightly price wise from 2007 and 2008, but not by a huge margin. And, better still, the number of condo sales is about even with 2008 and actually up substantially from 2007. As we've been continually seeing, the prices in the Boston real estate market have been holding remarkably steady throughout the recession. But now in July we have transactions coming back - July is the first month in a long time where year over year transaction numbers have been comparable to the numbers of the past couple of years.
I don't know if this is the start of a trend in terms of the number of sales or just an anomaly, but as we start to turn a corner with the economy towards recovery, I suspect we'll begin to see more of a pickup in real estate market activity in Boston - similar to what's been going on in many other parts of the country for a few months now.
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