Massachusetts home sales decline in January as prices creep upward: Report

Massachusetts condo and single-family sales were both down by double-digit percentages in January compared with the same month in 2018, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. At the same time, median prices were up slightly for both.

For both types of housing, sales have been down or flat for most of the past 12 months.

“In terms of closed sales and prices, the first month of 2019 followed the trend we generally saw in 2018: sales down and prices up,” Anne Meczywor, president of the realtors association and a broker at Roberts & Associates Realty in Lenox, said in a statement.

Sales of single-families were down 11.9 percent year over year and sales of condos were down 14.3 percent. The median price of a Massachusetts single-family was up 3.4 percent, to $379,900, and the median price of a condo was up 3.8 percent, to $368,500.

January also showed the lowest number of for-sale single-families for that month since the realtors association began tracking the figure in 2004. That inventory was down 8 percent year over year. The inventory of available condos was up 6.5 percent, however.