Home Buying in Greater Boston Stalls This Spring

Spring is typically a busy season for buying and selling homes in the Greater Boston market. But this spring, it's anything but busy.

The combination of escalating home prices and rising interest rates has extended a three-year-long housing market malaise during which sellers haven't listed homes for sale.

The Boston Globe noted that only 750 single-family homes across Greater Boston were listed for sale in February, according to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors. This figure is down 13% from last year and 34% from February 2020. Significant uncertainty about the state of the nation's economy and stock markets has concerned potential homebuyers and sellers alike.

“What is staggering about what we're seeing now is that it wasn't by any stretch affordable to buy a home here before [interest rates rose],” explained Paul Willen, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, in an interview with The Boston Globe. “Typically, when you see rates go up like they did, you expect home prices to drop a bit. But it seems like no matter what happens, prices go up in Boston.”

While the state of the housing market hasn't deterred everyone from seeking homes, for most everyone else looking to buy a home, the current market conditions are causing concern.

Melvin Vieira Jr., an agent at the Re/Max Real Estate Group in Jamaica Plain, offers his interpretation of the current market: Interest rates have deterred many would-be sellers from putting their properties on the market. They have a low mortgage rate now and don't want to pay a higher rate on their next home.

With little supply in the market, high prices for what's available, and an intense demand for homes, many buyers are feeling stymied, too. Vieira Jr. said that buying can be manageable when you put up a big down payment and keep monthly expenses low. But high down payments and high monthly expenses are pushing homebuying out of many people's reach.