By Kim Siebert MacPhail
According to realtor Suzanne Koller of Suzanne and Company— Bedford’s branch of Keller-Williams—the real estate market has been increasingly busy over the last few months, to the point where there are ready buyers but very few houses to show them. Koller reported a recent bidding war as additional evidence of a turn in the tide.
“I’ve been begging people to sell their houses because we don’t have much inventory,” she said in a recent phone interview. “We were feeling the shift somewhat at the end of last year. It’s like they say ‘you don’t know you’ve been at the bottom until it starts to get better.’ People have been waiting to buy because they thought prices would keep going down. Now they want to move before prices get too high.”
Prospective sellers, too, have been holding out for fear of putting their houses on the market but not getting a decent price. An additional problem is that people who want to downsize—but stay in Bedford—don’t have many places to go, with tear-downs making way for million-dollar houses that increasingly replace more modest homes.
On the other end of the family-size spectrum, families that want to upsize— to get off a busy street, or to move into a more congenial neighborhood—are struggling to find a home within their price range.
“I have 12 families who want to sell their smaller homes right now,” said Koller. “They don’t have anywhere to go unless they want to spend a million dollars.”
This warming of the market is happening in other pockets around the Greater Boston area, but not in every town. Buyers appear to be targeting communities with good schools and strong public transportation or access to major commuting corridors.
The Greater Boston Association of Realtors (GBAR) also sees a trending upswing in home sales. Saying in December that sales of single-family detached houses continued to rise, GBAR notes on its website that sales rose 11.8% in December over the previous month last year, following two even more robust months of 31% (November) and 28% (October.)
Specifically for Bedford, GBAR’s statistics mirror Koller’s experience: December 2012 saw double the home sales of December 2011 (15 versus 7), although median sale prices were somewhat lower ($480,000 versus $508,635.) Inventory of houses for sale was 48.6% lower in December 2012 than it had been in December 2011 and houses stayed on the market far fewer days on average: 65 in 2012 versus 166 in 2011.
For a full analysis and chart of Bedford’s home sales numbers for December 2012, visit: https://www.gbreb.com/gbar/housingreports/Dec2012/Bedford.pdf
The GBAR also noted that condominium sales have rebounded: “Similar to the single-family housing market, condominium sales rose steadily in December to their highest level for the month in eight years. A total of 758 condo units [in the Greater Boston are] were sold in December 2012, and increase of 17.5 percent over last December’s sales volume and the most since December 2004 when 830 units sold. This marks the twelfth consecutive month in which condo sales have improved on an annual basis, with double-digit gains observed on a year-to-year basis during each month of 2012. Empty-nester, dual-income echo-boomer households, and investors are all helping to drive demand for condos in the current market.”
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