Good News & Bad News About Real Estate Market

Yesterday, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors released a report on single-family home sales for October. The reports indicates some good news and some bad news.

First, the good news...Sales of single-family homes in Massachusetts rose 3% in October from a a year ago.

Now the bad news...the median selling price of a single-family home in Massachusetts dropped by 5.2%.

This is the fourth month in a row that sales have increased while prices have dropped.

Here are some specifics in the report taken from boston.com

During October, 3,057 detached single-family homes were sold in Massachusetts, and the median selling price for the month was $275,000, down from $290,000 in October 2010, the association said.As for the Bay State’s condominium market, 1,038 condos were sold in October, up 0.78 percent from the number in October 2010; condominium median selling prices in October were up 4.08 percent from the October 2010 median price to $255,00, the association said.

But the "big picture view" of the Massachusetts real estate market still shows trouble. Experts predict that sales for 2011 will be down from 2010 and 2009 while Foreclosures increase.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday activity set records. And as I mentioned above, real estate sales improved over the past four months of 2011. These are positive signs...but the question is, are they real indicators of long term improvement to our slumping real estate market?

We all hope so.