Mass. home sales spring to life in April, but overall housing concerns remain

There were 3,100 single-family homes sold in Massachusetts last month, the largest year-over-year increase in sales since June 2021.

Real estate market analysts at The Warren Group said April's sales volume represented a 6.8% climb over the 2,902 sales recorded in April 2023. It was just the third time in nearly three years that home sales were up from the same month a year prior, following tiny increases in January and February of this year.

Cassidy Norton, The Warren Group's associate publisher, called April's sales "a positive sign for both buyers and sellers" but highlighted how sales volume alone can't tell the whole story.

"The market has been exceedingly tight in recent years as mortgage rates and building costs rose. More sales didn’t move the needle on home prices, however; the median single-family home sale price in April rose nearly 10%," she said, adding that last month's median price — $610,000 — was not far off the record high of $615,000 set in June 2023.

Through the first four months of 2024, 10,113 single-family homes have sold in Massachusetts — eight more than were sold in the same span of 2023. But compared to the first four months of 2023, the year-to-date median single-family home price here is now 9.5% higher, at $575,000, The Warren Group said.

Home sales across Massachusetts sank to a 12-year low in 2023 and housing here is inaccessible or unaffordable for many residents. Gov. Maura Healey last year identified housing as "the number-one issue facing this state" and said there is a shortage of 200,000 units across the state.

The five-year, $4.12 billion housing bond bill Healey filed in the fall has not surfaced in the House, where it is stands as one of numerous significant pieces of legislation that lawmakers say they intend to pass into law by the time their formal work concludes for the year on July 31.

Another snapshot of the housing market and the struggles that homeowners and renters face is expected on June 20, when the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University plans to release the "State of the Nation's Housing 2024 Report."

"On the for-sale side, millions of potential homebuyers have been priced out of the market by high home prices and interest rates, while the number of renters with cost burdens has hit an all-time high," the center said in an advisory Tuesday. "However, a surge in new multifamily rental units is slowing rent growth and accelerated single-family construction is starting to lift for-sale inventories."