Mass. housing a 'red-hot market'

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By State House News Service

More than 5,100 home sales were recorded in Massachusetts last month, a 16.3 percent increase over October 2014, and year-to-date sales are up nearly 11 percent, according to a report on the housing market released Tuesday morning.

The surge in home sales this year occurred mainly after May, since sales over the first five months of the year, partly due to severe winter weather, were down 1.7 percent, according to The Warren Group, which said buyers started purchasing homes at an "incredible rate" once the weather improved in April and they were able to more easily hunt for houses.

“Is the dramatic spurt in sales volume purely the effect of our historically bad winter? Or did the improved economy and jobs picture unleash unprecedented pent-up demand? I’d say both, but the weather clearly plays a role," Tim Warren Jr., CEO of The Warren Group, said in a statement. "The second-worst winter on record for the area – ahead of even 1978 – was 1996, and there is nothing even close to that drastic of an effect in our data. What makes this market even more remarkable is the fact that median prices continue to rise very modestly – right around 2 percent for the month of October and the year to date."

From June through October, there have been 30,350 single-family home sales, an 18.3 percent increase over the same period in 2014. Sixty-seven percent of all single-family home sales this year have occurred in that five-month stretch; by contrast sales recorded June through October have accounted for between 46 and 53 percent of the year-to-date sales in every year since 1987.

In the June to October stretch, condo sales accounted for 65 percent of this year’s total. That percentage has never been above 52 percent in any year since 1987, The Warren Group said.