Home Buying

Yikes…the latest home and condo prices in Somerville

“My buyers are priced out and I am sad.’’

Somerville’s Davis Square has long been hot, but buyers are now scooping up homes in neighborhoods across the city. Katherine Talyor/Boston Globe

By Scott Van Voorhis

October 29, 2015

2 minutes to read

Somerville home and condo prices are on fire with some of the biggest gains in the state as the fall sales market takes off.

The median home price in Somerville hit $775,000 in September after a 64 percent leap, the highest of any city or town in Eastern Massachusetts, stats released by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors show.

And Somerville condo prices are not far behind, leading the pack among the larger towns and cities across Massachusetts where most of the state’s multi-family buildings are located.

“We are still seeing strong buyer demand and double-digit increases in open house attendance,’’ says veteran Coldwell Banker real estate agent Sara Rosenfeld, who has been selling real estate in Somerville since the early 1980s.

The rising prices come as Somerville’s cachet hits new heights, with some buyers even dissing Cambridge to focus their searches on a city once considered to be its workaday and uncool cousin.

Story continues after gallery.

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Somerville’s Davis Square has long been hot, but buyers are now scooping up homes in neighborhoods across the city, including once out of the way Winter Hill, as a long-awaited plan to extend the Green Line slowly edges forward.

There is also excitement around the redevelopment of Assembly Square, where hundreds of new luxury apartments are being built.

“I have more people who are downsizing from the suburbs that want Somerville,’’ Rosenfeld said.

The growing interest in Somerville, in turn, is helping drive prices to new heights.

No flash in the pan, Somerville’s September shocker price is in line with where the numbers have been all year, with the median price of a home in the city, through the first nine month of the year, hitting $730,000. That’s up 35 percent over the same period in 2014, according to MAR.

The median condo price in Somerville also made news, shooting up nearly 30 percent in September, to $570,000.

That was the biggest increase of any major town or city in Eastern Massachusetts except for Framingham, where the median condo price jumped 32 percent to $192,000, the Realtors group reports.

By contrast, Boston’s median condo price rose 9 percent in September, to $519,000, while the median price of a condo in Cambridge fell 2 percent to $600,000.

In fact, a growing number of would-be Somerville buyers are now looking at Medford, Melrose, Malden and even Revere to find affordable alternatives, Rosenfeld notes.

“You have people who have been saving money for years, young professionals, and they are getting priced out of Somerville,’’ Rosenfeld says. “My buyers are priced out and I am sad.’’