HYANNIS – Cape Cod real estate sales value and mortgage activity increased in August.
Barnstable County Register of Deeds John Meade reports the total value of sales was up 8.7 percent from the previous August with a 17 percent jump in the volume of mortgage activity.
“A lot of that is related to low interest rates I think, especially on the mortgage end, and people are out there refinancing,” Meade said.
“A pretty strong month.”
The median individual property sale value was up 6.8 percent from last August to $399,000.
Meade said he attributes the median sale price to movement on the higher end of the market.
Total volume of sales was down 2.9 percent from the same month last year.
“I take a little off of that because most of that is the fact that we did fewer foreclosures,” Meade said.
The county was down about 20 sales for August compared to last year, but 15 of those were foreclosure sales.
“That’s a good thing,” Meade said. “My guess is we are pretty close to being right on the number in terms of what we did last year for regular sales.”
Foreclosure deeds were down 63 percent from last August and are down 42 percent for the year.
For the year to date, the total volume of sales is down 1.9 percent, total value of sales is up 5.5 percent, individual sales value is up 3.2 percent and mortgage volume is up 1.5 percent.
Meade said the market is down about 45 “real” sales from 2018 out of almost 5,000 sales.
“I think it means we have a solid base real estate market going on here,” Meade said.
“Nothing spectacular, but just good solid numbers that have been pretty consistent for the last few years.”
Meade said it will be interesting to see what happens to the market over the next few months in regards to interest rates.
“This rate environment really just kicked in a couple months ago, and my guess is this might trigger people to be looking and we may have a strong fall as a result,” Meade said.
Meade said it is still early when it comes to impacts because sales are between 45 and 90 days out.
“Typically, September and October are busy for us,” Meade said. “Hopefully, really busy. We all want to see very busy real estate activity. It is good for everybody.”
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