Navigating the holiday home-buying market (which really exists)
A new home is topping many holiday wish lists this year as a mild fall spurs a surge of activity by buyers and sellers across the Boston area.
A new home is topping many holiday wish lists this year as a mild fall spurs a surge of activity by buyers and sellers across the Boston area.
Pending sales of single-family homes were up 26 percent in November in Greater Boston, while pending sales of condos rose 20 percent, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.
And the brisk pace of sales has continued right into December, helped by relatively mild days in the 40s and 50s and without a snowflake to be seen.
“Historically, for the most part, serious buyers over the holiday season were relocating execs,’’ noted Elaine Bannigan, broker owner of Pinnacle Residential Properties in Wellesley. “Anecdotally, that seems to be changing, as my agents have negotiated a lot of transactions with local buyers over the past month.’’
Still, one big question now is whether all this late season activity by buyers will spoil the holiday season’s traditional reputation as a sleepy time great for bargain hunters.
November prices – at least for single-family homes whose sales were pending but not yet closed – jumped 7.6 percent in the Boston area to a median of $484,000.
That was higher than any region in the state and well above the 4.5 percent increase in the median price statewide, to $345,000, according to MAR.
Still, even with the rise in sales activity, the last days of December are likely to provide a chance for some buyers to walk away with holiday home bargains, at least in the suburbs.
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Homes still on the market are more likely than not to have been bypassed earlier in the year by buyers, either because they were overpriced or are in need of some work.
“No question you’d rather be a buyer in the fall/winter and a seller in the spring, when more people are looking,’’ Bannigan wrote in an email. “Many unsold properties get discounted at this time of year.’’
The red hot downtown Boston condo market is more of a mixed bag.
Neda Vander Stoep, an agent in the Back Bay office of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, pointed to a unit at the South End’s Atelier 505 that recently sold for six figures above its asking price of $3.4 million. That was after 30 showings and a trio of competing bids.
Yet other condo owners are dropping prices as the year winds to a close in a bid to land a buyer.
“If it’s been on the market for a while, there is room to negotiate for a lot of properties that are still on the market,’’ Vander Stoep said.
David Crowley, director of sales and marketing at Raveis Marketing Group in Boston, often urges clients to consider putting their homes on the market during the holiday season.
The reason is that both sellers and buyers are likely to be more serious about working out a deal – no one is putting their home on the market in mid-December just to test the market.
“In many ways the holidays create a perfect storm where the motivations of buyers and sellers come into perfect alignment,’’ Crowley notes. “I find that people looking to buy homes around the holidays tend to be serious buyers who often have a deadline in sight, and that’s usually on or before December 31.’’
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