June 30, 2009
It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). For the full source data behind this post, plus seasonally adjusted and tiered price data, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website.
For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. - April data is released in June).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Boston area* as of April:
April 2009
Month to Month: Up 0.4%
Year to Year: Down 7.7%
Change from Peak: Down 19.7% in 43 months
The following chart shows the Boston area HPI scaled such that the September 2005 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Boston area HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (September 2002).
It looks like we’re kicking off the usual spring / summer price bounce in Boston home prices. If the past three years are a guide, we can expect to see slight price gains in the Case-Shiller data for the next 3-4 months, regardless of the direction of the economy or the housing market as a whole.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare Boston’s performance to other areas across the country:
To recap, we have seen the following interventions in recent months meant to boost the housing market:
- $8k first-time buyer tax credit
- 4.5% - 5% mortgage rates
- various moratoriums on foreclosures
- numerous federal programs encouraging loan workouts
The apparent result of this host of actions has been a flattening to very slight upticks seen in the chart above, in a month that is historically one of the strongest of the year for the real estate market. I guess you can color me underwhelmed.
And here’s our final chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
Due to the strong seasonality of Boston’s Case-Shiller data, we won’t really have a good idea of whether price drops are done in Boston until the fall numbers start to roll in. Until then, enjoy the ride!
*[Case-Shiller defines Boston as the entire Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all or part of the following counties: Essex MA, Middlesex MA, Norfolk MA, Plymouth MA, Suffolk MA, Rockingham NH, and Strafford NH.]
June 30, 2009
Let’s take our monthly look at which cities and towns have the most price reductions.
The following charts show the percent of MLS, FSBO or REO listings that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.
For those that are interested, I have uploaded the full data set in Excel format here. The downloadable Excel file also includes charts showing the top ten cities/towns/neighborhoods with the least reduced-price listings.
First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:
Of the 161 cities/towns we ranked in the Boston area this month, 89 had price-reduced ratios of fifty percent or more.
Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten Boston area neighborhoods for price reductions:
Of the 56 neighborhoods we ranked in the Boston area this month, 9 had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. On average, the neighborhoods with more price reductions had lower closed prices per square foot.
The general trend in Boston looks to be heading slightly toward less price reductions, however every city and neighborhood is of course different.
June 16, 2009
Let’s check in on our stats once again and find out where buyers are currently getting the biggest discounts off asking price. If you are a potential buyer, this will help you to know which neighborhoods may be softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price, and help you know where to look for potential bargains.
In the chart below, we have taken all sales data from last month in Redfin’s Boston service area and sorted it by zip code. We calculated the overall difference between the sale price and the list price. Note that this reflects the final list price, after all price drops in the listing. Any zips with fewer than ten sales are excluded from the top and bottom ten rankings, but interested readers may download the full data summary in Excel format (xls).
For a quick look at where a given zip code is located, just type it into the Redfin search box, or drop by the handy USNaviguide.com zip code map.
Here are the top ten zip codes with the largest overall discount:
The overall discount dropped a bit in June from our previous update in April, down to 4.5% from 5.1%. Down in Duxbury (02332) buyers are getting the biggest discounts, knocking nearly 10% off the average list price.
Here are the ten zip codes with the smallest discounts:
In the Lowell Highlands (01851) and south Boston just east of the Franklin Park Zoo (02121) sellers are actually getting more than list price on average.
Is the zip code you’re shopping not on either the top 10 or bottom 10? No problem, just download the full rankings in Excel format and hit the “FullSummary” sheet.
Of the 3,008 sales we tracked in the 1-month period, 336 homes sold for 10% or more off the asking price, while 125 homes sold for 5% or more above the asking price.
June 8, 2009
According to the MLSPIN, the database for real estate transactions and listings for Massachusetts, Redfin agent Hannah Driscoll ranks third in Eastern & Central Massachusetts in May among agents who represented home-buyers of condominiums, single- and multi-family properties based first on number of deals, then by total dollar amount. In May, Hannah closed 6 deals totalling $3,377,900.
Even with taking a couple of weeks off, Sean Valiton closed 3 deals worth $1,328,000 and ranks 40th. Adam Welling started working for us in late April and he’s worked on 40 signed offers. None of have closed yet, but with it taking over 50 days for transactions in Massachusetts to close, we don’t expect to see any until June.
Redfin clients work with some of the most active and successful agents in Massachusetts. Redfin agents are experts in the current real estate market and they know what it takes to help our clients buy the homes they want.
Our Clients Love Our Fanatical Service
We survey every client and track every transaction in a central customer database. For the surveys we received in May from our Boston clients:
- 18 clients responded to our customer-satisfaction survey and posted a review online, down from 24 in April.
- All 18 of those clients, or 100%, would recommend Redfin to a friend, the same rate from April.
In these surveys, Redfin asks customers to rate the likelihood that they would recommend Redfin to a friend on a 0-to-10 scale. Customers who rated 6 or higher count as people who would recommend Redfin to a friend.
More People Are Making Offers On Homes
In May, our Boston clients were busy touring homes and making offers:
We also had a great home-buying class in May. Twenty-six people came to our Somerville office to learn about the home-buying process and meet our agents. Check out the slide deck from the class.
It’s Taking 52 Days To Close On A Home
In May, it took 3 days longer for our Boston clients to close on their homes in May than it did in April:
- For our clients who bought re-sales, the average time from initial agreement on terms to the close of the deal was 52 days, up from 49 days in April.
- 0 of our clients failed to get financing, down from 2 in April.
- 6 of our clients’ deals failed the home inspection, up from 2 in April.
- Of our closed deals, the average discount off list price for homes sold was 4.08%, up from 3.30% in April.
Look For Our June Report
We’ll be back next month with our analysis of the June numbers. Let us know what you’d like to see in that report.
May 26, 2009
It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website.
For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. - March data is released in May).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Boston area* as of March:
March 2009
Month to Month: Down 2.0%
Year to Year: Down 8.0%
Change from Peak: Down 20.1% in 42 months
The following chart shows the Boston area HPI scaled such that the September 2005 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Boston area HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (September 2002).
Boston home prices actually increased in March in 2006 and 2007, and fell 1.1% in 2008. This year’s 2.0% 1-month drop is definitely something of a deviation from the recent pattern. It will be interesting to see if we still get a late spring / early summer bump in the HPI beginning in April like we did in 2008.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare the Boston area’s performance to other areas across the country:
And here’s our final chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
While Boston had been showing much more resilience since the start of the bust, it seems that recent months have somewhat broken this trend. Even so, Boston’s home prices have still fallen less than most other cities measured by the Case-Shiller index, and would have to experience a massive fallout to “catch up,” which seems highly unlikely at this point.
*[Case-Shiller defines Boston as the entire Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all or part of the following counties: Essex MA, Middlesex MA, Norfolk MA, Plymouth MA, Suffolk MA, Rockingham NH, and Strafford NH.]
May 8, 2009
Let’s look at our brokerage stats in Boston to see how what our clients are doing right now reflects what’s happening in the market.
Our Clients Love Our Fanatical Service
We survey every client and track every transaction in a central customer database. For the surveys we received in April from our Boston clients:
- 24 clients responded to our customer-satisfaction survey and posted a review online, up from 19 in March.
- All 24 of those clients, or 100%, would recommend Redfin to a friend, the same rate from March.
In these surveys, Redfin asks customers to rate the likelihood that they would recommend Redfin to a friend on a 0-to-10 scale. Customers who rated 6 or higher count as people who would recommend Redfin to a friend.
More People Are Out Looking At Homes
In April, our Boston clients were busy touring homes and making offers:
*Adam joined the Redfin team on April 20th. He’s a native of Marblehead and has 6+ years of real estate experience.
We had 25 people come to the home-buying class at our Somerville office to learn about the home-buying process and meet our agents. Check out the slide deck from the class.
It’s Taking 49 Days To Close On A Home
In April, it took 9 days longer for our Boston clients to close on their homes than it did for Redfin’s clients in other markets:
- For our clients who bought re-sales, the average time from initial agreement on terms to the close of the deal was 49 days, up from 45 days in March; for Redfin’s April clients in other markerts, the average was 40 days.
- 2 of our clients failed to get financing, up from 0 in March.
- 2 of our clients’ deals failed the home inspection, down from 3 in March.
- Of our closed deals, the average discount off list price for homes sold was 3.13%, down from 4.05% in March.
“The closing process is taking more time because it’s taking up to twice as long to get homes appraised,” says Redfin Boston agent Hannah Driscoll. “It takes so long get an appraisal that we have to set closing dates 60 days out from when the offer is accepted – it used to be 45 days out.”
Look For Our May Report
We’ll be back next month with our analysis of the May numbers. Let us know what you’d like to see in that report.
April 28, 2009
It’s time once again for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI).
For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. - February data is released in April).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Boston area* as of February:
February 2009
Month to Month: Down 1.3%
Year to Year: Down 7.2%
Change from Peak: Down 18.5% in 41 months
The following chart shows the Boston area HPI scaled such that the September 2005 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Boston area HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (February 2003).
Price drops in Boston did not show much sign of moderating in February, but if the past few years are any indication, it seems likely that they will experience a slight spring uptick beginning with next month’s data. As of February home prices in Boston have “rewound” exactly six years.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare the Boston area’s performance to other areas across the country:
And here’s our final chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
Boston’s overall decline is still by far the smallest among the seven Redfin markets tracked by Case-Shiller, and is the fifth-smallest overall out of all 20 Case-Shiller cities. Way over at the other end of I-90, Seattle is an interesting contrast to Boston. Prices there have only been declining for 19 months (vs. 41 in Boston), but have already fallen 20.9%, compared to a decline of just 18.5% here.
*[Case-Shiller defines Boston as the entire Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all or part of the following counties: Essex MA, Middlesex MA, Norfolk MA, Plymouth MA, Suffolk MA, Rockingham NH, and Strafford NH.]
April 24, 2009
Time for another update on where buyers are currently getting the biggest discounts off asking price. Our goal in sharing this data is to help potential buyers to know which neighborhoods are softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price, to better equip you when making an offer, and help you know where to look for potential bargains.
In the chart below, we have taken all sales data from the last two months in Redfin’s Boston service area and sorted it by zip code. We calculated the overall difference between the sale price and the list price. Note that this reflects the final list price, after all price drops in the listing. Any zips with fewer than ten sales are excluded from the top and bottom ten rankings, but interested readers may download the full data summary in Excel format (xls).
For a quick look at where a given zip code is located, just type it into the Redfin search box, or drop by the handy USNaviguide.com zip code map.
Here are the top ten zip codes with the largest overall discount:
The overall discount rate in Boston slipped slightly from last month’s 5.8% down to 5.1%. Meanwhile, there was little to no consistency in the top ten zip codes.
Of the 427 sales we tracked in the 1.5-month period, just 14 homes sold for 20% or more off the asking price, while 43 homes sold for more than asking.
We’ve been tracking the discount trend for six months now, and have seen Boston’s overall discount hold relatively steady between 4.5% off and 5.8% off. It will be interesting to see what the spring and summer bring to these stats.
April 14, 2009
Redfin’s Boston agents and myself (Director of Online Marketing) will be at The 21st Amendment (150 Bowdoin St, Boston) from 6 – 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14.
Have a drink with us and talk about our website, the real estate market or how many games it will take the B’s to beat the Habs in the first round of the playoffs.
So you’ll know who to look for, here’s my Twitter profile.
Technorati Profile
We know it’s last minute but it’s not every day I visit Boston :).
April 13, 2009
We’re kicking off a new series on Boston Sweet Digs called Redfin By The Numbers. In this series, we’ll take a look at our brokerage stats in Boston to see how what our clients are doing right now reflects what’s happening in the market.
Let’s take a look at Redfin’s March numbers in Boston.
Our Clients Love Our Fanatical Service
We survey every client and track every transaction in a central customer database. For the surveys we received in March from our Boston clients:
- 19 clients responded to our customer-satisfaction survey and posted a review online, up from 11 in February.
- All 19 of those clients, or 100%, would recommend Redfin to a friend, the same rate from February.
In these surveys, Redfin asks customers to rate the likelihood that they would recommend Redfin to a friend on a 0-to-10 scale. Customers who rated 6 or higher count as people who would recommend Redfin to a friend.
People Are Kicking Tires
In March, our Boston clients were busy touring homes and making offers:
- Redfin clients in Boston toured 292 homes in March, a 65% increase from the 177 homes toured in February.
- Our clients made 44 signed offers on homes, up from 32* in February.
o Sean Valiton: 22 offers
o Hannah Driscoll: 22 offers
- 2 of those offers, or 5%, were on bank-owned foreclosures, down from 6% in February.
*In an earlier post with the February numbers, we reported the number of unsigned offers we received from Redfin clients. Starting with this post, we’re tracking the number of signed offers our clients submitted to listing agents.
We also had a great home-buying class in March. About 15 people came to our Somerville office to learn about the home-buying process and meet our agents. There were a lot of questions about the first-time home-buyer tax credit. Check out the slide deck from the class.
It’s Taking 45 Days To Close On A Home
In March, it took about a week longer for our Boston clients to close on their homes than it did for Redfin’s clients in other markets:
- For our clients who bought re-sales, the average time from initial agreement on terms to the close of the deal was 45 days, down slightly from February’s 46 days; for Redfin’s clients in other markerts, the average was 38 days.
- All of our clients successfully financed their homes, the same as in February
- 3 deals failed the home inspection, up from zero in February.
- Of our closed deals, the average discount off list price for homes sold was 4.05%, down from 4.15% in February.
Look For Our April Report
We’ll be back next month with a report on what happened in April. What numbers would you like to see in our April report?
