Mass. single-family home prices fall 12 percent

Massachusetts home prices had their biggest monthly drop in two decades in April, the Warren Group reported today.

The median price of a single-family home in Massachusetts was $305,000 last month, down 12 percent from $346,750 in April 2007, said the Warren Group, the Boston-based publisher of real estate data and the publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

That drop was the steepest decline since the Warren Group began recording prices in 1987, the firm said.

The number of single-family homes sold in the state during April declined 12 percent to 3,215, from 3,654 a year ago, the Warren Group said.

The median price of a Massachusetts condominium fell 1.8 percent from $274,950 in April 2007 to $270,000 in April 2008, the Warren Group said.

On a volume basis, condo sales fell 22.2 percent in April from 2,204 last year to 1,714.

“In the early 1990s - during the last big housing slump - prices fell in 42 of 48 months,” Timothy Warren Jr., chief executive of the Warren Group, said in a statement. “Since March 2006, when prices first started to fall in this current slump, there have been price declines in 20 of the 26 months. But the early '90s price declines weren’t as dramatic as the drops we’re seeing now. Let’s hope that these lower prices bring buyers back to the market so this slump will have a shorter duration than the 48 months we endured in the 1990s.”

A second, separate residential real estate report on the Bay State was released this morning by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, which uses a different method than the Warren Group to track sales activity.

On a year-to-year basis, the realtors group said that the volume of Massachusetts single-family homes sold in April was down 15.8 percent, with the median sales price down 8.7 percent; the number of condos sold in April was down 26.6 percent, with the median price flat.

The Massachusetts median selling price for a detached single-family home in April was $314,900, down from $345,00 in April 2007, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors said; the number of such homes sold in April was 2,803, down from 3,328 a year ago.

As for the Bay State's condo market, the median selling price in April was $275,000, up from $274,650 in April 2007; last month, 1,286 condos were sold, compared with 1,753 condos sold in April 2007, the realtors association said.

Massachusetts Association of Realtors president Susan M. Renfrew claimed to see some bright spots because the April sales activity was an improvement over what was seen in March.

“Despite the fact that sales of single-family homes were down in April compared to last year, there were still some small, but positive signs,” Renfrew said in a statement. “The monthly decline was not as great as in each of the first three months of the year, while on a month-to-month basis, sales experienced significant increases and stabilizing prices. While we’ll need to see how the numbers are next month, this at least indicates that the spring selling season is picking up.”
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)