Bay State home sales may have hit a 17-year low for the first half of the year, but pending sales in June were not off as much as the rest of the nation.
While the National Association of Realtors reported that purchase and sale agreements fell 12.3 percent in June, the most recent data available, the MLS Property Information Network, the region’s biggest listing firm, said pending home sales slipped to 9,322 in June, down from 9,884 in June of last year, a 5.6 percent decline.
“From everything I see, we’re ahead of the curve, our average selling price on pending business is up by 2 and one-half percent” said Rick Loughlin, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage New England, putting the best face on a declining sales market. “There are higher levels of foreclosures and inventories in places like Florida, Arizona, Nevada and southern California, and that drags the national numbers down.”
Still, Loughlin acknowledged that it’s not time to break out the champagne. Coldwell Banker’s pending sales were off by 5 percent in June, he noted. “We can focus on doing our day-to-day real estate business, be aggressive, price properties appropriately and coach buyers and sellers,” he said. “But if the economy and consumer confidence is suffering, it just keeps people on the sidelines.”
Carolyn Chodat, the broker-owner of Classic Properties in Medway, said pending sales are “stronger” in Boston than in the suburbs, but she failed to provide data to make the case. In MetroWest, she said, pending sales have increased since the spring, but she did not offer any numbers to back up the claim.
Good news for sellers and agents has been hard to find this year. Sales of single-family homes fell to 18,487 for the first half of 2008, down from 22,851 for the same period last year, a 19 percent drop, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
June home sales in Massachusetts slipped 14.9 percent to 4,663 from 5,479 in June of last year while the median price for the month declined 8.6 percent to $329,000 from $360,000.
The condominium market has not fared any better. For the first half of 2008, sales plummeted 28.3 percent to 9,844 from 13,733 last year. Condo prices are flat, with the median slipping a modest 1.1 percent to $277,000 for condos sold in the first half of 2008 from $280,000 a year earlier.
