Barnstable County Real Estate Sales Volume Drops in March

BARNSTABLE – Real estate sales volume dropped significantly in March on Cape Cod, but the individual sale value saw a slight increase.

The volume of sales was down 20 percent from March of 2017 with a 15.7 percent dip in total value of sales.

The median individual property sale value was up 7 percent from last March to $353,000.

Barnstable County Register of Deeds John Meade said March has been a volatile month in recent years.

“In March of 2017 we were up 20 percent from March of 2016,” Meade said. “So it’s sort of been a roller coaster for March for the last three years.”

For the year to date, the volume of sales is also down.

“The year to date we are down 4.7 percent, which is the result of us being down this March,” Meade said. “I’m expecting we’ll get back up in April.”

Total value of sales is up 2.5 percent for the year to date and the individual sales value is up 4.5 percent.

Meade said the first three months is always the slowest quarter of the year.

There were 522 deeds recorded in the county in March will sales values above $50,000. Meade said that number will be close to 1,000 deeds in two months.

“In the first quarter of the year if we are down it doesn’t have a tremendous effect,” Meade said. “You can come back pretty quickly from a quiet first quarter.”

Meade said some good news is that a third of the decrease in activity in 2018 is due to a reduction of foreclosure deeds. There have been only 51 foreclosure deeds in 2018 which is down from 74 through three months last year.

“We are down about 70 recordings for the year and a third of them are foreclosure deeds that didn’t occur this year that occurred last year,” he said. “We like to see those foreclosure numbers drop and so far this year they have dropped as compared to last year.”

By BRIAN MERCHANT, CapeCod.com NewsCenter

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