Luxury Homes

Record number of Boston condos sold for over $3 million in 2015

22 Liberty, a new condo building on Fan Pier, has sold multiple units over $3 million. John Tlumacki/Boston Globe

Once upon a time, a $5 million condo sale in the Back Bay or Beacon Hill might have made a nice story or at least have been worthy of note.

But unless a celebrity is involved in the deal, a $5 million downtown condo sale is more likely to get a yawn than a headline, and for good reason.

Last year, 117 condos in Boston sold for more than $3 million, a record.

That’s up from 73 in 2014.

And with hundreds multimillion-dollar units expected to close later this year after the new Millennium Tower opens, that record is more than likely to get shattered again in 2016.

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In fact, 11 condos have sold for more than $3 million though the first five weeks of 2016.

“There were huge jumps” said Kevin Ahearn, president and owner of condo marketing and research firm Otis & Ahearn, of the exponential increase in multimillion-dollar sales. “It is really something else.”

The number of multimillion dollar condo sales in Boston has jumped ten-fold since 2003, when there were 16 sales above the $3 million mark. Such deals were unusual enough that Banker & Tradesman led off a story that year with the fact that two Back Bay townhomes were sold for more than $6 million.

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All told, more than 822 condos fetched at least $1 million in Boston in 2015, up from 690 in 2014.

There were 286 condos sold for more than $2 million in 2015, compared to 191 deals the year before.

Meanwhile, 131 condos fetched $1,500 or more per square foot in 2015 – a key indicator of deals worth several million.

That was roughly three times the number of such sales in 2014, when 46 condos sold for more than $1,500 a square foot.

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