Cape Cod Real Estate Market Slows to End 2018

HYANNIS – The real estate market on Cape Cod slowed significantly to end 2018.

Barnstable County Register of Deeds Jack Meade reports that the volume of sales was down almost 15 percent and the total value of sales dipped over 22 percent from the previous year.

The median individual property sale value was also down nearly 4 percent from December 2017.

The median individual property sale value for December was $350,000 which was the lowest level since last January.

“It was kind of a slow finish to what was a pretty good year,” Meade said.

For the year, the volume of sales was down 3.5 percent, the total value of sales was up 1.8 percent and the individual sales volume increased by 6.6 percent.

“It was good news, bad news I guess,” Meade said.

Meade says the next three months are usually the slowest for the region and that we won’t know if this is a trend until the spring.

“One month a trend does not make,” Meade said. “You have to give it a while to see what is going on.”

Meade did say the activity for October and November indicated the market was going in the other direction.

“Hopefully this is just a little hiccup and we are going to continue on in a positive manner going forward,” he said.

Meade said the higher interest rates could be a factor in the December slow down.

“We are not seeing refinance activity,” he said. “It is basically all purchase money mortgages that we are looking at.”

Meade said the potential change in the tax bill may be having an impact as well.

“The fact that the deductibility of certain things is not there where it used to be, maybe on second home purchases and things like that,” he said. “We’ll see if that has a long-term impact.”

There was 19 percent decrease in the volume of mortgage activity for December and mortgage volume was down almost 9 percent for the year.

Foreclosures were up over 21 percent in December from the previous year, but down over 1 percent for the year.

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