Middle Market Towns Back

The spring market has been particularly choppy this year. Sales have stalled amid a shortage of listings that has left many buyers fuming. The up today, down tomorrow economy hasn’t help things much either.

And it has been an increasingly uneven real estate market as well. A few towns and neighborhoods are super hot, with double digit increases in sales and prices. By contrast, many other communities are seeing a falloff in either sales or prices, and, in some cases, both.

Not hot right now are a growing number of the more affluent suburbs, such as Hingham and Carlisle, which have seen both prices and sales fall off this spring.

Ditto for low income cities and urban neighborhoods, which, after starting to rebound after hitting bottom during the Great Recession, are starting to see prices deflate again.

But the middle market towns out there right now are the hot ones, posting big increases in both sales and prices this spring, according to April numbers recently posted by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

Towns seeing the biggest jumps in sales and prices this spring include:

Danvers: Median price rose 18 percent, to $377,500, while sales rose by more than 18 percent;
Dedham: Median price surged to nearly $400,000 – a 20 percent increase – while sales jumped 13 percent;
Barnstable: Median price jumped more than 35 percent, to $469,950, while sales soared nearly 41 percent;
Beverly: Sales up 42 percent while prices increased nearly 12 percent to $369,959;
Milford: Sales rose by more than 41 percent while the median price hit $270,000, an increase of more than 17 percent.
Norwood: Sales increased by more than 46 percent while the median price rose more than 9 percent, to $377,450
Wakefield: Median price jumped to nearly $420,000, or a 13 percent increase, while sales rose by nearly 10 percent;
Waltham: Median price hit $441,000, an increase of 11 percent, while sales jumped more than 17 percent.