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State House News Service
Two months into 2025, the market for single-family homes in Massachusetts is roughly following the trend that began to emerge at the tail end of 2024: the number of homes sold and the median price of those sales are both up slightly compared to a year prior.
In the latest checkup, The Warren Group said Tuesday that there were 2,136 single-family homes sold here last month, a 4.2% increase over the 2,500 transactions in February 2024. The median single-family sale price climbed 4.9% year over year to hit $575,000 this February.
"The median home sale price is down $10,000 from January, which is usual for the month-over-month period. Looking at previous patterns, March should see a jump in both the number of sales and the median price versus February," Cassidy Norton, Warren Group associate publisher, said.
In the first two months of 2025, 4,765 single-family homes have sold in Massachusetts -- 7% more than during the same two months of 2024, The Warren Group said, and the median single-family home sale price has increased 5.5% on the same basis to stand at $580,000 year-to-date.
The dynamic of chronically-limited inventory and always-escalating prices has played a major role in driving up cost of living in Massachusetts. State policymakers are counting on a new housing production law to begin to chip away at what is expected to be a 220,000-plus housing unit shortage by 2030.
"Our economic future and our livelihood, our growth as a state depends on our ability to build more homes," Gov. Maura Healey said last week on GBH Radio as she detailed how the combination of the 2021 law requiring multi-family zoning around MBTA service and last year's housing bond and policy law are meant to spur production. She added, "It's the most important thing that we can do as a state."
A statewide housing plan Healey's administration released in February found that increasingly high rents and sale prices "burden household budgets, undermine the stability of communities, exacerbate homelessness, cause health problems, weaken the economy, and widen gaps between privilege and disadvantage."
The report said that fewer than two out of every 100 homes here are available for sale or rent and new housing production in Massachusetts has slowed significantly in recent years compared to the 2010s. And with inventory chronically low, costs have soared and pushed homeownership out of reach for many. Median home prices rose 73% from 2000 to 2023 after adjusting for inflation, while median household income rose only 4% in real dollars over the same period.
As of March 13, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.65%, according to data from Freddie Mac compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That's virtually unchanged from a week before and down just slightly from one year ago, when the average 30-year mortgage rate was 6.74%.
Norton said the condominium market followed roughly the same trends as single family homes in February, with last month's 1,108 condo sales marking a 2.9% increase over a year earlier and February's median sale price hitting $511,000 following a 4.3% year-over-year climb.
There have been 2,266 condominium sales so far in 2025, up 10.5% from the same point in 2024. The year-to-date median sale price for condos is up 5% over the year to $525,000.
"The 10 percent year-to-date increase in sales may reflect an increase in inventory, potentially illustrating a loosening in the market," Norton said.
