Bay State home prices defy market gravity, but for how long?
A small army of prognosticators has gone on the record predicting a double dip in home prices.
Yet even as the number of homes sold has fallen off a cliff, the cost of buying a home in the Boston area - and across the state - just keeps going up, up and up.
The Bay State's median home price is on the cusp of breaking the $300,000 mark again, having hit $299,900 in November, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.
That's a 5.2 percent jump over November 2009.
The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, pegs the price increase at 7.3 percent, to a new median sale price of $294,000.
It is the 13th straight month home prices have risen in Massachusetts, according to MAR.
And the increases come even as home sales continue their months-long swoon. MAR reports a 31 percent drop in sales activity from November, 2009, while the Warren Group pegs the drop at 29 percent.
In case you've spent the last six months on a deserted Pacific isle, sales collapsed after the end of the home buyer tax credit last spring.
So far, Greater Boston and the state as a whole are bucking the conventional thinking about where home prices are headed. More than a few economists and market trackers are predicting another 5 to 10 percent drop across the country over the next year.
Still, for those buyers hoping to see prices come down to more realistic levels, especially in the pricey Boston area, the game's not over yet.
In the wake of the robo-signing scandal this fall, banks across the country put a halt to home seizures as they scrambled to get their paperwork in order. That led to a drop by as much as one third in foreclosure volume.
But with foreclosure heavyweights like Bank of America revving up home seizures again, we could be in for a flood of distressed properties just in time for the spring market.
If that doesn't start pulling prices down again here in Greater Boston, then nothing will.
