Homes For Sale in Worcester Market Report

 

I always enjoy doing Worcester because of the predictive aspect of it. First of all, there's LOTS of data, which helps to increase confidence that whatever is happening there is truly the trend, not just a clue as to what the trend is. Also, you could say many of the towns that I cover go the way Worcester goes. If prices are going up in Worcester, in means prices are likely going to go up further east in response to that. If they are going down, sooner or later it will affect pricing further east. OK, enough preamble:

Housing transactions are off the peak, and there's more housing to

buy in Worcester, but not much.

Can’t see the chart? You can find it Here .

Holy falling transactions Batman. We've dropped 20% from the peak. That's a bigger drop than we've seen elsewhere, and it indicates to me that demand is softening. But is it? As we've noted elsewhere, if there are only X houses on the market, you can't sell 3x for very long - you just start to run out. Let's look at some other data to see what is happening.

 

Prices have fallen a bit after a very steady rise.  Seasonal housing trend?

Very likely.

Here's prices. HMMM. Prices have fallen a little bit too. This is something that we've seen in other markets, and we usually see a softening in the fall prices, and that's probably what's coming through the data here. But is that indicative that things are cooling off? The HSI is down, but it's still above 100. A couple more data points I want to check.

 

First, I want to look at the amount of time that Active Home Sellers have been selling. If the Days On Market is long, that means they can't get sold. At 127, we see that we have actually fallen from the previous reading of 149. Also, I looked at the prices that are being asked on a $/sq foot basis. It's at $132, well above the last trend, and shows that not only have the sellers not been waiting around very long, they are also pretty optimistic that the buyers will come up in price.

 

Find Your Next Home or Check out the Competition!

 

Only time will tell if they are right, but at this juncture, I don't see a lot of reason to think that the drop in transaction volume is meaningful at this time. Maybe if we see DOM lengthen to 150 plus, that will be an indicator that sellers will have to cut prices, but it's too early to be sure of that just yet. Heck, even if they did cut prices 10%, that still would result in an increase in the $/sq foot number in the next report - so we have plenty of optimism here things are going to go up, not down. Last note, lender owned real estate is down a bit, getting closer to the 11 units we saw less than a year ago.

 

 

Worcester Houses For Sale and Sold Market Statistics - Raw MLS Data

 

  • Worcester‘s “Home Seller Index” (HSI): 108 Last Report: 118
  • There are 279 homes listed as For Sale.
  • There have been 560 houses sold in the last 6 months, and 302 homes sold in the last 3 months in Worcester.
  • The Average number of Days on Market was 114 days for just SOLD homes.
  • There is an Average Market Time of 127 days of the homes For Sale (currently for sale).
  • The amount that was paid in Dollars per Square Foot averaged $119 (vs. $122 )
  • There was an Average Sold Price of $180,108 for sold homes.
  • Worcester, MA, has 19 properties (vs. 23 in the last report) advertised as lender owned or foreclosure (typically foreclosure) .
  • Worcester has 30 properties (vs. 27) advertised as a short-sale is going to be needed by lender.

 

 

 

*All statistics are for Single Family Houses and based on data in MLS. Matt’s HSI is proprietary. (That means you won’t find it anywhere else. Take that, Case-Schilling!).

 

 

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About Matt Heisler

Matt Heisler is a real-estate professional and owner of this website. He has been selling homes in MA for buyers and sellers for over 20 years. He is an expert in foreclosure purchases, short-sale purchases, short-sale sales, buy and hold investing, fix and flip investing, and of course traditional residential home sales. He is happy to take questions as they pertain to real estate on Title V, Radon, Termites, Sump Pumps, Roofs, Foundations, Wells, Septic Systems, Cash-Flow, Staging, and a host of other housing issues. As a Vanderbilt University alumnus, he is proud to serve his local community.

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*All information is posted in good faith and is assumed to be reliable, but may rely on third party information sources.