Back to the future with real estate prices
It feels like 2002 again, the year I bought my Natick fixer-upper.
Housing sales were down yet again across Massachusetts last month. And prices were down even more.
Home sales fell another 12.5 percent in January, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports in monthly numbers released today.
Meanwhile, prices fell by nearly 18 percent in January, pushing the median sale price down to $263,500. That’s down from $321,000 last January.
In fact, we haven’t seen home values like that since 2002, when my wife and I bought our Natick fixer-upper for $280,000.
As prices have spiraled downward over the past two years, I always felt some strange sort of security. However far they might fall, median prices were unlikely to reach what I paid for my own house, let alone dip below.
But they have, so here you go. I’m still alive, my house is still there, and the world keeps turning.
At some point, the combination of low interest rates, ever lower prices, and the newly passed $8,000 tax credit will kick in to spur buying.
The real estate association, in the press release it sent out on January’s sales numbers, calls this a “triple for first-time home buyers.’’
That may be, but it’s anyone’s guess whether even this unusual combination of sales incentives will boost our ailing real estate market in time for the traditional spring buying season.
