Lowell: The Hottest Town in Massachusetts?

A report on CBS Boston yesterday listed Lowell as the hottest town in Massachusetts in terms of an increase in volume of home sales from 2013 to 2014.  The basis of that headline was a report issued by McGeough Lamacchia Realty Inc which said this about Lowell:

Lowell tops our list with 955 home sales for 2014, an increase of 9.5% compared to 2013 when there were 864 sales. Lowell is an affordable place to live with a median price for a home at $202,000, an increase of 6.3% compared to 2013. Lowell is a busy community located in Middlesex County at the intersections of Routes 3 and 495, making it an excellent commuter location. It’s just 45 minutes by car to Worcester, roughly an hour and a half to both Hartford, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island, and 45 minutes to Boston. Lowell has open recreational space and parks, as well as cultural attractions such as events taking place at the Tsongas Center on the UMass Lowell campus in-town. The population of Lowell is 108,522, an increase of 1.7% since 2000. The residential tax rate in Lowell is $15.48 per $1,000 of assessed value.

Our own statistics from the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds do show an increase in the number of deeds for consideration (as opposed to deeds for no consideration) recorded.  In 2013, there were 1125 deeds recorded for property in Lowell with consideration greater than $49,999 and less than $750,000.  In 2014, there were 1187 that met that criteria, an increase of 6%.  That doesn't meet the 9.5% increase found by the realtors, but that might be because they were counting the sale of "homes" while registry records, which don't distinguish based on the use of the property, would have included commercial property sales as well.