Despite slightly lower interest rates, it’s been a slow start to 2026 for single-family home sales in Massachusetts.
Through the first two months of the year, more than 500 fewer homes have sold compared to the same time period in 2025 — 4,274 this year compared to 4,779 in 2025, a drop of more than 10.5%, according to The Warren Group. Analysts there said the 1,969 homes sold in February marked an 8% drop from a year earlier.
“February usually has a reduced number of sales compared to other months, and last month was no exception,” Cassidy Norton, The Warren Group’s associate publisher, said. “In addition to recent market fluctuations due to the interest rate environment, tariff concerns, and lack of inventory, this February also had a series of snowstorms, consecutive days with a windchill of less than zero, and days-long power outages.”
With the number of homes sold down, the median price of those sales continued to climb — from $580,000 as of the end of February 2025 to a median price of $595,000 so far this year, an increase of 2.6%.
The persistent dynamic of severely limited inventory and always-escalating prices has played a major role in driving up the cost of living in Massachusetts. State policymakers are counting on a 2024 housing production law to begin to chip away at what is projected to be a 220,000-plus housing unit shortage by 2030. Gov. Maura Healey said in December that the state has so far “started or built 100,000 homes.”
There were 12,096 new private housing units authorized by building permits in Massachusetts in 2025, according to preliminary annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That would be down 15.6% compared to the 14,338 new private housing units authorized in 2024, according to the Census Bureau. There were 580 units authorized in January of this year, the bureau said.
On the condo side of the market, sales are also down more than 10.5% so far in 2026. The Warren Group said there have been 2,026 condo sales through February, down from the 2,266 recorded in the first two months of 2025. At the same time, the year-to-date median sale price for condos has decreased 3.7% to $505,000.
“In addition to the same patterns affecting the single-family market, there was a influx of condo inventory late last year that has largely been sold,” Norton continued. “Without that bump in the market, the number of sales have dropped along with the inventory.”
