2008 /2020 Reccesion proof Boston ?

[Mike S.]

I remember watching Real Estate in the very heart of the city take a barelly notigable dent in 2008, it seemed as if it just leveled off for a year or so then gained insanely steadily year by year soon after. Not so true for the outskirys of the city and surrounding towns that got tmjit hard. I'm just curious how the Boston/Cambridge market will react to to Covid19. The world will be changing from all this but seems a city thats a medical hub with all its Universities and innovation seems to stand a chance rhoughts on rental and sales market ?

[Jonathan Bombaci]

Hi @Mike S., I agree with you. We're seeing some markets on a national scale being impacted already and with a recession looming people are stacking cash and waiting for the deals. But we're seeing the real estate market in the greater Boston area still stay very strong. It was a very strong sellers market in February and what we're seeing is, yes buyers have dropped out of the market, but sellers have also held off on listing their properties. I ran the numbers last week for a virtual meetup I host and I think Suffolk county is down like 50% on active Multi-Family listings compared to this time last year. Assuming the buyer pool got cut in half, those offset each other on the supply and demand curve. 

I'm anxiously waiting to see what happens when the market opens back up. Will buyers be out in droves before these pent up listings hit the market, or are all these listings going to hit the market before the buyers return? In the last 2 weeks or so we're seeing more listings coming online and we have buyers that "put things on hold" starting to look at properties again. I think Greater Boston real estate will stay strong through the summer.