Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | February 22, 2021 | Worcester Business Journal 17 B A N K I N G & F I N A N C E F O C U S Only going higher e 2020 spike in Central Mass. home prices was unprecedented, with 2021 demand likely to keep the trend going BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor Top 10 communities for home sales The top Central Massachusetts communities for number of single-family home sales in 2020. 2020 number % change 2020 median City/town of sales from 2019 price Worcester 1,310 1.6% $285,000 Framingham 607 -4.0% $496,000 Natick 404 12.5% $712,500 Fitchburg 390 0.5% $254,450 Leominster 387 -4.4% $320,000 Shrewsbury 368 -10.0% $476,500 Sudbury 308 9.2% $800,000 Franklin 298 -10.8% $506,000 Marlborough 279 -7.9% $440,000 Holden 266 -7.6% $385,450 Source: The Warren Group H ome prices are soaring, and there's virtually no inventory on the market. It's a phenomenon not at all unique to Central Massachusetts. Single-family home prices had already been on a long, steady climb across Massachusetts, which has one of the country's most expensive residential real estate markets. e coronavirus pan- demic, despite the coinciding recession, has only made prices rise higher still. "COVID just magnified it 10 times," said Mike DeLuca, the president of the Realtor Association of Central Massa- chusetts. Few areas of the residential real estate sales market have been untouched by the pandemic. Open houses are being held with staggered appointment times so crowds that oen arrive for showings can tour a home safely. Areas pop- ular for second homes, such as on the Cape and Islands or in the Berkshires, are seeing the high- est spike in demand. Bidding wars are far more common in places that rarely, if ever, saw them before. But most of all, a withering supply of homes and sky-high demand have sent prices virtually everywhere into territory that in some Central Massachusetts towns might have been impossible to believe a year or more ago. In just a year's time, median home prices in Ayer, Millville and Natick rose by $80,000 or more. Prices, in some cases skewed a bit by a small number of sales, rose by 20% or more in towns spanning both the region's geography and range of affluence: Athol, Black- stone, Phillipston, Princeton and War- ren, in addition to Ayer and Millville. "If you had to boil the market down to one word, it's inventory," said DeLu- ca, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker in Worcester. "ere was no inventory before COVID, and it's worse now." Continued on Page 18 Mike DeLuca, the president of the Realtor Association of Central Massachusetts Shays Lane, a small subdivision off Salisbury Street in Holden, opened in 2019 as one of a series of new home developments between the town center and the Worcester line. PHOTO/GRANT WELKER

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