ATHOL – When asked what the North Quabbin real estate market will do in 2023, Hometown Realtors owner Sara Lyman believes prices will decrease, though not by much.

“When you follow the economists and you look at what’s happening right now in January, everything is lining up to what they say, and that is that the market is going to stabilize,” Lyman said. “We’re not really going to see prices come down too much, but we’re not going to see them rise at the level that they have been over the last two years.”

Speaking with the Athol Daily News, Lyman said, “Over the last two years, we’ve seen prices go up between 10, 20, 30 percent in some areas of Massachusetts, but we’re not going to see that for 2023 and 2024. We may see prices go up 1.2 to 1.7 percent over the course of the next year, but we’re not going to see the rapid incline that we’ve had.”

Changes to housing inventory

Lyman said that there are only 3,633 homes on the market across the MLS PIN (Multiple Listing Service Property Information Network) network, which is most of Massachusetts, but excludes Berkshire County and the Cape. However, realtors are used to seeing that number at about 10,000.

“There’s still very, very low inventory,” she said.

Despite generally low inventory across the Commonwealth, Lyman said the market in North Quabbin is “loosening up a little bit.”

“Buyers have a little bit more choice as to what is coming on the market,” she explained. “As of today in Athol, there are 22 homes on the market. So you can see how that inventory has gone up since the pandemic.”

Those homes that are available, she said, are a mix existing and new construction.

“We do have some nice new construction in the area, which has helped the inventory go up,” said Lyman. “I just finished my nine-town review of the North Quabbin, and it was really, really interesting for me to see how the inventory has changed because of the new construction that our area has seen over the course of the last two years.”

Between March and December of last year, the Federal Reserve Board hiked interest rates seven times to a range of between 4.25 and 4.50 percent. The Fed is expected to increase the rate 25 base points when it next meets on Feb. 1.

Regarding the steps taken by the Fed in an attempt to cool the rate of inflation, Lyman said she started to see that impacting the area in the fourth quarter. She compared this market to what happened in 2016, when homes would sit for just under 30 days and were still selling at a very good price.

“When you look at major media out west right now, they say the market is crashing and the sky is falling, but that really hasn’t been the case here,” she said. “We’ve seen very, very strong sales through the fourth quarter and into the first quarter of 2023. Just this week my office had four houses go under deposit. So thing are coming on; buyers are having a chance to look at them, make an educated decision – they have choices in the market.”

”A healthy market”

Lyman predicts that between low inventory throughout the rest of this year and a slight drop in demand due to higher interest rates, there will be a healthy market for both buyers and sellers.

In 2021 and much of 2022, cash buyers—many moving into the area from out of state—were freezing a lot of first-time homebuyers out of the market. Lyman said that trend has started to slow down.

“In the fourth quarter we really started to see the market shift in terms of not only cash buyers but also loan products,” Lyman said. “So during 2022, a lot of the cash buyers fizzled out of the marketplace here in the North Quabbin, and it opened up a little bit of room for the USDA, FHA, and VA buyers that we’re so used to seeing in our marketplace. Definitely into the fourth quarter, we saw more of those normal loan types in our area; offers getting accepted, which is really nice to see.”

Lyman said the price of a single-family home in Athol in Athol rose some $30,000 to an average of $278,000. She said most homes in North Quabbin communities were going for an average price of between $280,000 and $300,000.

While her company doesn’t handle rental referrals, Lyman and her associates are aware of the demand for rental housing. Lyman had a property management business for five years, but when the market crashed, that aspect of the business was put to the side. She added that the office gets calls daily for rentals.

“There’s such a need for housing in this area, but it’s twofold,” she said. “It’s a need for affordable housing, and it’s a need for better quality housing. The rental market here, unfortunately, because our price points are already so low, we have a lot of out-of-town investors who come in and purchase property and just don’t keep them the way that they should.”

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.

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