Summer is typically a sleepy time for the real estate market, but not this year.

“For sale” signs are popping up across Greater Boston and other parts of the state, with a significant uptick in homes hitting the market, says Peter Ruffini, president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

That, in turn, is likely to mean good news for home buyers stressed over rising prices, Ruffini says.

Certain communities, like Plymouth, seen above, are particularly seeing a pick-up in listings.

Several dozen additional homes have hit the market in Plymouth this summer, providing a significant boost to the market, notes Ruffini, a regional vice president at Jack Conway & Co. in Hanover.

That’s significant given the coastal town is often a bellwether for the South Shore real estate market, he says.

“The good news is that there are fewer (sellers) sitting on the sidelines than there were earlier this year,” Ruffini says.

Overall, June saw 8,418 homes hit the market across the state, a 13 percent jump over the same period in 2013, MAR numbers show.

More listings, in turn, could also take some of the pressure off buyers, who are too often faced with bidding wars given the long-standing shortage of homes on the market, he says.

And while the median home price in Massachusetts hasn’t quite caught up to where it was during the housing bubble years in the mid-2000s, Ruffini is OK with that.

“In my view the market recovery is more about sustainability and affordability,” Ruffini says. “It has to be a sustainable market.”

Cheers to that.