Case-Shiller: Boston Home Prices Still Experiencing Moderate Declines

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.]

Biggest Discounts April Update

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.

Drinks with Redfin Tuesday April 14th

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 .

Redfin By The Numbers, March Edition: More People Out Looking At Homes

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?