Thanks to John Keith for pointing out that the Trulia Blog is passing out some warm and fuzzy news about the Boston real estate market. According to the Trulia September 2007 Trends Report, the downtown Boston market is experiencing year-on-year gains in home prices.
Median sales price in Back Bay is up 18.2 percent over last year, showing that some areas have defied the real estate slump. South End was next on the list of most popular neighborhoods. Densely populated South Boston, or “Southie”, was third most popular. Median sales price in South End and South Boston was up 8.8 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively, over the previous year.
This confirms what we have been saying for some time now, that city center condo prices buck the suburb and pan-US housing trends.
=== Updated on October 24, 2007 ====
Based on the comments we received, here is a look into deeper statistics for the Back Bay market from 2005 – 2007.
From 2005 – 2006:
- Average Price: $819,339
- Average Days on Market: 101
- Number of Units Sold: 387
From 2006 – 2007
- Average Price: $865,507
- Average Days on Market: 111
- Number of Units Sold: 453
These numbers are based off of data pulled from the MLS (Back Bay 2005 – 2006 and Back Bay 2006 – 2007). Over the past two years in the Back Bay, the number of condos sold has gone up significantly, average days on market has trended up, and average price continues to trend up.
Keith Munsell 
Median price means very little if sellers/new developers are stubbornly keeping their prices artificially high (i.e. refusing to acknowledge housing market slump). It would be more informative/accurate to report the average time real estate is spending on the market or some other marker of how easy or hard it is to sell properties, in addition to the misleading median price. Sure housing could be selling at high prices, but if only 3 apartments sold…then there is nothing really to be optimistic about. Thanks for being so…misleading…
Thanks for the comments! Did you want to hear about Days on Market statistics, or a number of units sold trend analysis? You’ve alluded to two distinct pieces of information.
We’ve gone ahead and updated the post to contain both pieces of information you’ve asked about. Hopefully this provides the information/accuracy desired.