Greater Boston bucking national price trends?
Boston is one of the cities that led a modest June rebound in prices, according to the latest Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller report.
The Hub was behind only to Chicago and Minneapolis, with a 2.4 percent gain in home prices in June. Chicago led the 20 cities covered by the Case-Shiller index with a 3.4 percent gain.
Monthly numbers, especially when you are dealing with the spring market, the traditional sales season, can be tricky if not downright misleading. A lot of this is just probably hype based on season changes.
In fact, on a year-over-year basis, home prices are actually down in the Boston metro market by 2.1 percent.
But there's the catch as well - the market began falling again a year ago and all we have to show for it is a lousy 2.1 percent drop in home prices? Hardly red meat for potential buyers.
The double dip in prices, at least when it comes to the core of the Boston market, so far is shaping up to be fairly wimpy. Sure, sales are down and have yet to recover, but prices remain extremely sticky.
Anyone banking on the Boston area finally become a buyers' market may have a very long wait ahead of them.
