Condo Market Holds Relatively Steady in Year-End 2006

Year end figures for 2006 exhibited a mild decline in condo prices for the downtown condo market. Although there was a mild decline for the year overall, fourth quarter sales and condo prices increased 2.8% from the same period a year before. Typically thought of as one of the slowest times of the year for real estate transactions, the boost in condo prices during the final three months of 2006 should create optimism for the market in 2007.

Despite most of the negative press that has been published about the poor state of the Massachusetts real estate market, it seems as though buyers who previously decided to "wait to see what's going to happen to the market" (as I frequently heard this past fall) have once again began to actively get involved with viewing units and purchasing. This seemingly sudden interest from buyers can also be attributed to sellers becoming more educated about the current state of the market and lowering their prices to more realistic (non-inflated) prices. Just in the past two weeks, I witnessed this trend first-hand while working with a client. The client had three top choice residences that he wanted to strongly pursue. The units had been on the market for between 127 and 471 days as of Monday, a couple of weeks ago. Two of the three condos went under agreement that day (the unit on the market for 471 days had received 3 offers in a 12 hour period) and the third condo had an accepted offer a few days later. Other than the shock that I had, when finding out three specific units (which had been on the market for a while) all went under agreement in a 10 day period, I felt a boost of confidence that the market is moving in a positive direction

I was recently quoted in the Boston Globe in an article written by Kimberly Blanton about the current state of the downtown condo market. When we spoke, we had a nice discussion about the real estate market boom of a few years ago, the current state of the market, and my thoughts on the near future. She has written many great articles that we have used as a base for some of the content and news updates on this website.