The housing market continues to stabilize nationwide and in the most populous county in western Massachusetts real estate sales showed modest gains over the last 12 months, according to a report released today.
The total amount of money spent on real estate in Hampden County in the last 12 months was more than $1.32 billion as average home sale prices rose in the cities of Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke and Westfield, according to the fiscal year 2015 report from Register of Deeds Donald Ashe.
" One you get to $1 billion that is a pretty good healthy market," said Ashe.
The average price paid for a single family home in Hampden County in the last 12 months was $175,079, an increase of 1 percent over the period that included the last six months of 2013 and the first six months of 2014.
" We are not going to see the real estate business booming along like it did before it busted," he said. "If properties appreciate 3 percent every year that is a good real estate market."
Home sale prices rose 2 percent in Springfield, 3 percent in Westfield, 5 percent in Holyoke and 6 percent in Chicopee, according to the register’s report.
A couple of troubling statistics in the report are a 21 percent increase in foreclosures and a 55 percent increase in foreclosure notices—the first step to initiate a foreclosure. Ashe said the jump in foreclosure activity is a result of banks catching up on their paperwork and does not signal a return of the crisis that helped bring on the Great Recession.
The number of foreclosures initiated by lenders jumped almost 60 percent in Massachusetts during the first five months of this year, according to report from the Warren Group, which tracks the mortgage industry.
The foreclosure crisis turned many former homeowners into renters with the result being a “landlord’s market,” according to Michaelann Bewsee, executive director of Arise for Social Justice.
" Rents have gone up. I expected to see prices continue to rise with a casino coming to Springfield and people's incomes just not keeping pace," she said.
Bewsee said her organization is seeing an increase in the number of families left homeless because they cannot afford rent in greater Springfield.
Bewsee and other anti-poverty activists say family homelessness has increased across Massachusetts.
The proposed state budget approved last week by the Massachusetts legislature includes $90 million to provide about 800 additional housing rental vouchers to low income families.
" If you think of 800 subsidies across the state when we have more than 2,000 families who are currently homeless it is just not adequate to meet the need," said Bewsee.
Governor Charlie Baker has proposed a $20 million fund to pay for programs to prevent families from becoming homeless and entering the state’s emergency shelter system.
