To Buy or Not To Buy…What’s Next?

RE/MAX Bentley's
RE/MAX Bentley's
Published on December 13, 2017

The struggle to decide of whether to buy or sell your home is one of the most important financial decisions that many of us will make in our lifetimes. For most Americans, a home is where their largest storage of wealth exists. For others, especially first time buyers, buying a home can be a daunting, and sometimes frighting task. While others, like renters, might simply feel like they have no other alternative. The questions that everyone in some form or another ask are: “What will be the value of this decision?” or “Can I afford it?”

For Residents of Massachusetts, most home values have skyrocketed. According to The St. Louis Federal Reserve home value index, values have varied across the nation, they have created a tool for a state-by-state comparison which can be viewed here. Washington D.C. has the highest home price increases in the nation, with Massachusetts coming in at number two. As The Fed states, these figures are estimates as they exclude many metrics that are not measured, however, we can narrow down some of these adjustments on a county level, in this case Essex County:

 

As we can see above, Essex County appears to be leveling (using 2016 data), with Massachusetts ticking down slightly for the 3rd quarter of 2017 after a steady rise since the 2nd quarter of 2015. This paradigm appears to create a sellers dream and a buyers nightmare, and possibly deterring the renters from thinking about making a plunge into home buying altogether. With inventories low, and listings spoken for before they even hit the market, it adds even more stress to would-be buyers and renters.

Fortunately, all is not lost during this era of trepidation, there are opportunities. To help folks thinking about buying or selling, The Massachusetts Association Of Realtors offers a town-by-town list of median sales price values which can be viewed here. While this data provided is a couple of months old (Realtors have current data access), it provides great insight and value in your due diligence quest into making a decision on whether to buy or sell in today’s market.

We here at Bentley’s Real Estate won’t make one of the largest financial decisions of your life for you, buying or selling a home, but we’ll help get you there. As part of our “experience elevated” process into buying or selling your home, we offer some of the best professionals in the industry that cover Massachusetts, Essex County, and The Greater Newburyport areas. If you’re in the early thinking stages, we can assist you through a free consult, it costs you nothing. Contact any of our Bentley’s Real Estate agents today!