Scott always has good posts. This one is surprising showing MA is #1, (in the continental US) or #2 in the whole USA when it comes to the average listing price for single family homes. To put that in context, Provincetown’s average singe family listing price today is $1.378M, more than twice the state average.
High listing Prices? Massachusetts has them beat!
Basically, the good old Bay State is No. 1 in the continental U.S. when it comes to the listing price of a typical four-bedroom, two-bath suburban home, Coldwell Banker finds in a new survey.
The average listing price here is pushing half a million at $489,063 for your basic subdivision home. That’s far above the national average, which weighs in at $292,152.
Now to be clear here, Hawaii ($742,551) actually has the highest listing price for the entire country, but given the obvious land constraints of the island state, it’s a little like comparing apples and oranges.
Interestingly, Massachusetts listing prices even beat out California ($431,625), New Jersey ($425,625) and Connecticut ($411,884), which has the hedge fund capital of the world in Stamford.
We also have more than are our share of spots in the top 100 when listing prices for two-bedroom, two-bath homes are broken down by individual towns and cities.
With an average listing price of $1.1 million for a two-bedroom, two-bath home, Weston ranks No. 14 in the country. But Los Altos in Silicon Valley has anything in Massachusetts beat, with an average listing price of $1.7 million.
So what’s happening here? We are heading into our third decade here in Massachusetts of anemic construction of suburban, single-family homes, with no change in sight.
The problem is well-paid professionals who relocate here to take jobs in our growing biotech and high-tech fields aren’t selling their spacious 4,000-square-foot colonials in Texas and North Carolina and saying gee, can’t wait to move into a tiny 1,100-square-foot condo next to a train station up in Massachusetts.
Instead they are bidding up whatever available suburban homes they can find within the 495 beltway, and, if they have the bucks, paying for teardowns in which new, outsized homes replace old capes and ranches in Concord, Wellesley, Hingham and other upscale suburbs.
OK, your turn on the soap box. What’s your take?