The region’s long-frenzied housing market showed more signs of mellowing in October, with prices leveling out and the volume of sales slowing.
That’s according to figures out Tuesday from the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, which tracks activity in 64 cities and towns in Eastern Massachusetts. It said the typical single-family home sold for $750,000 in September, a record for the month and up 10 percent from September 2020, but down 4 percent from August and the lowest median price in six months. Likewise, condominium prices hit $620,000, up 5 percent from the same month last year but a bit lower than this summer.
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That plateau comes as sales volume slows, particularly for single-family homes, which fell 13 percent from the same time last year, even as listings trended upward at the start of the traditionally busier fall season. Real estate agents and others who watch the market say prices have reached a point where they’re simply out of reach for some buyers, while others have adopted a choosier position about buying than earlier in the pandemic, when cooped-up families were trading condos and apartments for houses with more room to stretch out.
“There’s definitely a more relaxed feel, and slower pace to this fall’s market,” said GBAR’s president, Dino Confalone, an agent with Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty in Cambridge. “We are seeing less urgency among buyers, especially where inventory levels have improved steadily since the end of August. Others seem to be pumping the brakes so as not to overextend themselves financially.”
That’s tilting the market in favor of buyers, Confalone said, or at least toward a more level playing field, compared with recent months when bidding wars were the norm. How long that will last, of course, is anyone’s guess.
Tim Logan can be reached at timothy.logan@globe.com. Follow him @bytimlogan.