Mortgage Activity Jumps in October on Cape Cod

BARNSTABLE – Low interest rates are continuing to spur mortgage activity on Cape Cod.

Barnstable County Register of Deeds John Meade reports the volume of mortgage activity jumped up 59 percent in October from the previous year.

“I think a lot of people went out and refinanced,” Meade said. “The rates are as low as they’ve been and people are taking advantage of it.”

Meade said people are now in a position to go into the refinance market or take out a second mortgage to make home improvements.

“That’s evidence by the numbers that we saw in October and we have been seeing for the last few months,” Meade said.

The volume of real estate sales in October was down 1.5 percent from last year and the total value of sales was down 14 percent.

October of 2018 was one of the highest valued months in years and the median individual property sale value was $406,000.

The median individual property sale value for this October was down 5.2 to $385,000.

Meade said a positive note for the month was there were fewer foreclosures compared to last year. Foreclosure deeds in October were down 30 percent from last year.

“If you take away the foreclosure numbers away from last year and match them up with this year we were only a few sales off,” Meade said.

For the year to date, the volume of sales is down 1.2 percent, but Meade said if foreclosure deeds were taken out from last year sales would be ahead in 2019. Foreclosure deeds are down 43 percent for the year.

For the year to date, the total value of sales is up 3.3 percent and the individual sales value is up 2.7 percent. Mortgage activity is up 11.6 percent for the year.

Meade expects the last few months of the year to be similar with last year’s sale numbers.

“The refinance market is still going to be busy,” he said. “Talking to folks who deal in that end of the world they have a lot of things in the pipeline. I’m guessing we are going to see these mortgage numbers continue to outperform last year’s numbers and I think the sale numbers are going to be pretty close.”