Cond-OH!!!-nos in Belmont Sales up in 2011 so far...

Surprise, surprise... Belmont, the town that boasts itself as "THE TOWN OF HOMES", saw some "non-home action"! While the single home situation languishes in what folks say is the snow storm malaise (4 sales for January and February -- the worst ever), condominium sales in Belmont had their best year EVER in transactions as well as average price (aided by 2 big gun "Mitt Romney type" townhomes in the Woodlands)!

15 Condos had the ol' master deed docs and 6D's done over for new owners in January and February of 2011. That "one-ups" the previous best (2006) by ONE. Average price? 537k; taking out 2007's previously "Ruthian" tab of 512k. It took agents 108 days to get the job done; you have to go back to 2006 to find "better days" (2006 did it in an average of 97 days).

We can speculate on what this means for "The Town of Homes"; have we priced ourselves out of the market? or is Belmont going through the inevitable "Cambridgeification?...or perhaps is it what I call the "Condo-many-of-them Syndrome"...so many of them for sale.

A quick look at MLS shows us that as of this morning (3/3/11) there are 27 Single family homes for sale in Belmont: average offering price $1,076,000. And Condos?...well surprise, surprise there is a neat bookend of ALSO 27 condos for sale (average offer price $521k). One would think all is parity, but let us dig a tad deeper:

In the last 6 months, 5 single family home listings went EXPIRED -- read that as failed to sell during contract time. 21 condos struck out in that same period of time. It seems there is a "Shadow Market in Condos". Lots of folks want to sell 'em but they know there is no one to buy 'em. It is sort of like all those souls who have just given up on looking for a job and, as such, are NO LONGER counted in unemployment stats.

The crux of the problem may well go back to the craze that took off around 2004 when lots of 2 families were bought up and converted to condos: I call that the era of Con-DUMB-iniums and have written about it in these pages (search under the "Condominium Category" to the right, and you will find it). These condo buyers were newbies in a new strange land -- a "Town of Townhouses" (really flats that echo with he footfalls of the upstairs neighbor), and now they want out -- but they can't get out. And we are not even talking about the "under water owners".

What does this all mean? Who knows (again), but maybe agents should put on their urban thinking caps and start talking about Belmont as a "City of Apartment Dwellers" instead of a Town of Homes. It may well add up to a few more paychecks