MAR: Real estate agents feel confident about local housing market

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

A monthly confidence index for the local housing market has hit its highest mark since the index’s launch in 2008, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors said.

The association calls its metric the Realtor Market Confidence Index, and it uses a 100-point scale. For January, the index’s monthly read was 65. For January 2012, the reading was 31.86. January 2013 was the 18th straight month of year-over-year increases. On the index, a score of 50 is the midpoint between a “strong” market (100 points) and a “weak” market (0 points), the association said.

Kimberly Allard-Moccia. Photo taken from MAR’s website.

Index readings are based on monthly responses from a random sampling of members of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. The members are asked questions about the conditions of the local housing market.

“Realtor-members’ confidence in the market is miles away from when we started tracking this data in 2008,” association president Kimberly Allard-Moccia said in a statement. “Realtor-members are positive about the market because their clients are.”