Boston Condos for Sale and Apartments for Rent
Nationally home sales and listings sunk in September
(Illustration by Getty)
Rapidly rising mortgage rates sunk home sales and listings to new depths in September.
Both home sales and new listings dropped
The number of homes sold last month plummeted 25 percent year over year while new listings dropped 22 percent, according to Redfin. Those are the largest declines reported by the brokerage since figures seen early in the early months of the pandemic.
“The U.S. housing market is at another standstill, but the driving forces are completely different from those that triggered the standstill at the start of the pandemic,” Redfin research lead Chen Zhao said in a statement.
Inflation is deterring Boston condo buyers
Unlike the record drops in May and April 2020, when the onset of the pandemic cratered the national housing market, inflation has kept Boston condo prices high and deterred potential sellers from putting their homes on the market and sacrificing their current rates.
Roughly 60,000 home-purchase agreements — or 17 percent of homes that went under contract — were canceled in September. That’s the second highest percentage on record following March 2020.
