November Real Estate Sales Fall Significantly on Cape Cod

BARNSTABLE – The volume of real estate sales on Cape Cod for November fell significantly from last year, but mortgage activity continues to rise.

Barnstable County Register of Deeds John Meade reports that sales volume dropped 17 percent from last November, along with an 18 percent decrease in the total value of sales.

“Why the sales are down? It’s hard to say. I think we just had an outstanding November of 2018,” Meade said.

“And it just may be a relative situation, and we might have a bounce back in December.”

There was an increase in mortgage activity of 33 percent from last November.

“That’s 100 percent due to the fact that the interest rates are as low as they are,” They are as low as they have been – ever,” Meade said. “So we are seeing a lot of refinance activities as a result of that.”

For the year to date, the volume of real estate sales is down 2.8 percent compared to last year. Meade said there is good news and bad news with that number.

“Even though we are down 2.8 percent, I would say 1.8 percent of that is the fact that we are doing fewer foreclosures,” Meade said.

Foreclosure deeds were down to nine from 12 last November. For the year to date, foreclosures are down from 221 last year to 127 this year, a decrease of more than 42 percent.

Meade said if foreclosure deeds are excluded, the county is down only about 100 homes sales compared to 2018.

“That’s basically 10 sales a month that we are not doing out of almost 7,000 sales,” Meade said. “It’s not much when you get down to it.”

The median individual property sale value was up 1.3 percent in November from the previous year to $390,000. For the year to date, the median sale value is up 2.7 percent.

Meade said a consistent median sale price around $400,000 may be causing potential buyers to pause helping to result in the drop in sales volume.

Meade predicts that December sales numbers will beat last year based on early observations.

“We had a drop off last year in December relative to November’s numbers and I think we may see the reverse of that a little bit this year,” he said.

For the year to date, total value of sales is up 1 percent and mortgage volume is up 13.6 percent.

At the end of the year, Meade thinks volume numbers will be pretty close to 2018, excluding foreclosure deeds.

“We’ll probably see an overall median sales value number up around 3 percent,” he said.