Although rental housing suffered through a sluggish year, home sales and prices surged, surpassing the expectations of industry watchers who had anticipated a more moderate market and deflating the notion floated by others that 2004 would be the year the “housing bubble” burst.
Double-digit home price appreciation, which many thought would be unsustainable this year, continued to be the norm in many parts of the Bay State. Sales of all residential property shot up 14.2 percent during the first three quarters of the year compared to the same period last year, according to information from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.
“It’s [the market] obviously better than we expected,” said Judy Moore, 2004 president of MAR.
According to MAR, sales in Massachusetts remain historically high and on pace to make 2004 a record year for home sales. Through the first three quarters of the year, sales of detached single-family homes were up 10 percent from a year ago and 4 percent higher than 1998, when a record 50,401 single-family homes were sold, the group reported.
The condominium market was particularly robust, spurred in part by empty nesters and first-time homebuyers who could not afford detached single-family homes. Condo sales jumped more than 25 percent over 2003 levels when an all-time high of 15,738 units were sold.
Realtors in many parts of the state were reporting signs that the real estate market was slowing. Homebuyers had more properties to choose from, and some residences were taking longer to sell, many reported. But those observations weren’t backed up by statistics.
Listings for all residential property were up only 3.3 percent during the first three quarters, according to MAR, and the number of single-family homes listed for sale actually slipped 0.5 percent. Meanwhile, the average time it took to sell residential property increased only about four days.
Low mortgage interest rates continued to be a major boost for the residential sales throughout the year. A slight increase in rates pushed many consumers to jump into the homebuying mode in the spring and summer.
But the low interest rates, which encouraged some to take the plunge into homeownership for the first time, continued to chip away at the supply of renters throughout Greater Boston at a time when the supply of newly constructed apartments grew.
Aglaia Pikounis may be reached at apikounis@thewarrengroup.com.