HINGHAM, Mass. —
The colonial on Hingham’s Bel Air Road has six bedrooms, an in-ground pool, tennis court, oversized patios, covered porches, private dock and spectacular water views.
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A Newton lawyer just paid $6.1 million for the property. But that doesn’t come close to the $7.2 million someone paid for a home on Bare Cove Lane near the World’s End reservation.
The two Hingham home sales are on the upper end of what has been a wave of multimillion-dollar single-family and condo sales on the South Shore since the first of the year. Median home prices have risen statewide in the post-2008 recession years. But a more recent combination of low housing-inventory and a booming national economy has created a sellers’ market.
Since January, The Patriot Ledger reports 130 South Shore homes sold for $1 million or more, with 98 of those in the same five communities – Hingham, Cohasset, Milton, Scituate and Duxbury – data provided by the Boston real-estate tracking firm The Warren Group shows. Hingham, with 25 $1 million-plus home sales, and Cohasset with 27, are leading the region when it comes to high-priced homes.
Coldwell Banker has ranked Hingham 37th in its latest national list for average home prices. That’s the real estate company’s second-highest average in Massachusetts. Only Wellesley ranks higher, at 18th.
“Hingham is very hot right now, for sure,” said Gail Petersen Bell, the senior vice president for Sotheby’s Home Center’s South Shore offices. “It has the proximity to Boston, and the (good) schools and other things.”
Hingham’s performance doesn’t surprise Town Administrator Ted Alexiades and selectmen Chairwoman Mary Power.
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Alexiades said those prices are a reflection of both the “structural health” of the town’s finances – Hingham has a triple-A bond rating – along with the quality of schools and other services.
Power, a 16-year Hingham resident, said she and other selectmen heard all those reasons during recent interviews for town committees volunteers.
“A lot of them are new to town, and that is what we hear,” Power said. She said people also like living near the picture-postcard harbor and waterfront.
Warren Group founder and president Tim Warren agreed that high prices are expected, given the South Shore’s geography and the affluence of some communities.
Hingham, for example, has more millionaires living in town – 334 – than any other South Shore town. The state Department of Revenue reports 147 people in Cohasset filed tax returns on incomes of $1 million or more last year; 139 in Duxbury, and 168 in Milton.
Warren said home sales are also benefiting from the overall recovery of the Boston-area market since the Great Recession of 2008.
“There are very desirable areas, especially close to the water,” Warren said. “People like that, and they’re willing to commute into Boston.” And like the rest of the greater Boston area, he said “the selection of homes for sale is very slim,” so it’s a seller’s market.
Bell, the Sotheby’s executive, said high-end properties in Cohasset and other towns are also attractive. The same week that the Bel Air Road sale closed, a new, shingle-style home on Beach Street in Cohasset sold for nearly $4 million. A week later, a glassy, waterfront home Surfside Road in Scituate sold for $2.5 million.
Sotheby’s and the South Shore’s other big realty groups are currently advertising a combined 19 homes for sale for $2 million or more, including two in Hingham – a $4.8 million property on Summer Street and a $4 million home at Martin’s Cove. A new, shingle-style house on Downer Avenue, also in Hingham’s Crow Point section, sold for $4.3 million in late June.
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And those prices are no longer unusual. These days, $2 million is the benchmark that $1 million sales used to be.
“During the recession, everybody went into their rabbit holes,” Bell said. “Now everybody is coming out.”
Condominium sales are pushing into the $2 million club, too. In June, two units sold for almost $2 million at the Black Rock Country Club development off Cushing Street in Hingham. One was purchased for $1.8 million by former Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek and his wife Catherine. Varitek’s former teammate, pitcher Tim Wakefield, has owned a Black Rock condo with his wife Stacy since 2004.
Most reports put Hingham at the top of the local market for the past couple of years, but the Warren Group shows Cohasset ahead of Hingham for median home price sales in 2017 – $826,000 for Cohasset, compared to $707,000 for Hingham and $610,000 for Milton.
Cohasset also leads Warren’s local list for median condominium prices, at $720,000. But Milton has the Warren Group’s top overall percentage increase in home sale price – 29.5 percent since 2005. Hingham’s is 11 percent.
While Power, the Hingham selectman, said she is pleased that high-earning couples and families want to move to her town, she’s concerned that the overall rise in sale prices is keeping others away – including the adult children of longtime residents who want to move back.
“Some have called Hingham home for generations, and they want to keep doing that,” she said. “For workforce housing, we don’t have much of that. That’s one of our challenges, and it’s getting harder.”
Condominium sales are pushing into the $2 million club, too. In June, two units sold for almost $2 million at the Black Rock Country Club development off Cushing Street in Hingham. One was purchased for $1.8 million by former Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek and his wife Catherine. (Varitek’s former teammate, pitcher Tim Wakefield, has owned a Black Rock condo with his wife Stacy Wakefield since 2004.)
Warren said the South Shore’s longtime transportation issues are “a little more challenging” for prospective residents, compared with the North Shore and west of Boston suburbs. “The Wellesleys have a turnpike they can zip in on,” he said.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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