Greater Boston median home sale price of $935,000 shows high cost of entry
SEPT. 25, 2025…..The end of summer usually marks the end of the real estate sector’s busy season, but the Greater Boston Association of Realtors said Thursday that inventory and mortgage rate dynamics could fuel steady activity through the end of the year.
The association said the single-family housing market in Greater Boston “remains incredibly vibrant and competitive, with median sale prices, closed sales, and active inventory all up compared to this time last year.”
The group said there were 1,077 homes sold within its 64 towns in August, a 15.5% decrease from July’s 1,275 sales and a 2% increase over last August’s 1,056 sales. The median price of those sales was $935,000, down 3.1% compared to July’s median sale price but 2% higher than last August’s median.
GBAR said 742 new single-family homes hit the market in August (down 6.1% compared to new listings last August), part of an active inventory that totaled 1,444 single-family homes. The group said that’s up 17.2% compared to the number of homes on the market last August. The median number of days a single-family home is on the market climbed to 23 last month, GBAR said, up from 21 days a year ago.
“For the first time this year, the median price a single-family property sold for was less than it was originally listed for, but barely. Median days on market for single-family property were also up,” GBAR President Mark Triglione, who owns Premier Realty Group in Reading, said. “Buyers that know their market and are well prepared have opportunities that simply haven’t existed in recent history.”
The larger inventory, combined with recent declines in the average 30-year mortgage rate, bodes well for prospective homebuyers, GBAR said.
As of Sept. 18, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.26%, according to data from Freddie Mac compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s down from an average of just under 7% at the start of the year and the lowest average rate since October 2024.
GBAR pointed to a report in NPR in which Freddie Mac’s chief economist said that home purchase mortgage applications reached the highest year-over-year growth rate in more than four years earlier this month.
“The past three years have also seen new single-family and condominium listings increase from August to September, so the expanded inventory paired with lowered mortgage rates could lead to a sizable number of closed sales next month,” the organization said.
A year after Gov. Maura Healey signed a housing law that she and other Democrats expect will help the Bay State chip away at a housing shortage estimated to be of at least 200,000 units by 2030, sales on the single-family residence market statewide are up slightly.
The 28,210 sales notched so far this year represent a 2.7% increase over the same point in 2024, The Warren Group reported last week. The median single-family home sale price has increased 4% so far this year to $645,000, the group said.
