Kelly Garrity – Correspondent for Boston.com
Feb 23, 2022 5:52 p.m
Cape Cod may be (usually) chilly this time of year, but its real estate market is anything but. The popular New England vacation destination is home to one of the hottest luxury real estate markets in the United States, a Realtor.com report published Tuesday found.
According to the report, Barnstable offers some of the most desirable luxury homes of any community in the country.
“The combination of quaint villages, quaint lighthouses and lobster rolls — plus all those white-sand beaches — made the hooked peninsula an especially appealing travel destination during the pandemic,” the Cape Cod report said.
According to the report, Barnstable has the sixth hottest luxury market based on how long the most expensive 1 percent of homes in a region have been on the market. The median list price for the 1 percent at Barnstable was $15.9 million, well above the national median of $5.5 million.
That median is up 16.6 percent year-on-year, according to the report, thanks to low mortgage rates, telecommuters, early retirement and a pandemic-driven desire for larger homes with more open space.
To achieve its ranking, the site looked at the luxury homes for sale in January, how long they had been on the market and how many unique visitors were looking at them online. Only the most expensive 1 percent of homes in these markets were included. The quote noted: “The concept of luxury real estate is somewhat in the eye of the beholder – and the market. A high-end home in parts of the Southeast or Midwest could hardly make it as a starter home in the most expensive parts of the coast.”
A second New England city also made the list: Portland, Maine, grabbed 8th place with an average price of $4.9 million for the most expensive 1 percent of homes in the area. However, this number could soon increase. Luxury home prices in the coastal city rose 27 percent in January, the report said.
Here are all the cities that made the list:
- Kahului, Hawaii
- San Luis Obispo, California
- Sebastian, FL.
- Hilton Head Island, SC
- Wilmington, NC
- barn stable
- austin
- Portland, Maine
- Salt Lake City
- Prescott, Ariz.
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