What’s Special about the Boston Real Estate Market?

The Boston real estate market is very unique. I have worked with clients from many states in the US as well as overseas, and many are surprised by how the Boston market works. In fact, even buyers and sellers who grew up in the Massachusetts suburbs are amazed by the rapid changes in the past decade in the Greater Boston area alone. With the rapid influx of population from other states and all over the world, the Boston market has absorbed capital and talents from a wide range of segments. The diversity of the Boston housing makeup has resulted in regional differences in real estate developments and pricing movements as well.

The Greater Boston market attracts strong capital from all over the country and the world. Historically Boston is known for having some of the oldest universities in the country. Many college graduates from Harvard and MIT especially continued to stay in the area to contribute to the economy. The robust economy is also fueled by a variety of industries from biotech, healthcare, finance, and education. The housing demand has been consistently strong and the land is scarce, making Boston one of the rare recession-proof areas in the country historically.

Some first-time home buyers would read about the US housing market from Google and get somewhat misleading information about the Boston market. For the above mentioned reasons, Boston is a very unique market that operates very differently than the rest of the country. So when the consumer takes the data for national average from many company to compare to Boston, it often generates misleading perception, and in many cases completely opposite results. Even some sub-markets in the Greater Boston operate very differently from the rest of Boston. That’s why it’s important to look critically at the regional data and make informed decisions based on the fundamentals of supply and demand.