slides: Worcester County’s Million Dollar Mansions

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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

GoLocalWorcester Features Team

It is hard to tell where the economy is going and real estate prices may be moving in the right direction, but some houses almost seem immune to the market.

GoLocalWorcester takes a look at the million dollar homes that have sold in Worcester County in the last year to date. There’s been a total of 10 mansions that have sold for $1 million or more in Worcester County.Three of these homes are on the same street in Southborough.

The average square footage of these homes is 5,390.50. The average list price for these mansions is $1,475,980, but the average sale price is about $100,000 less than that. It works out to be about $265 per square foot.

Time on the market

Eileen Fitzpatrick, of RE/MAX Traditions in Bolton told GoLocalWorcester that these more expensive homes, even if priced competitively, will sit for awhile, because there are fewer people looking in that price range, in this area. Fitzpatrick said, “People want smaller homes with less maintenance. There are plenty of people who can afford a million dollar home in the Bolton area, but they choose not to for several reasons.”

These ten homes sat on the market on an average of 310 days, with the quickest sale in 14 days. One home took 712 days to sell.

Low inventory, lots of buyers

Steve Levine, of RE/MAX in Shrewsbury said the market over the last year has been slow, but in the last month it’s been crazy. Levine said, “There’s still very low inventory. At one time, there was a surplus of listings and no buyers, but now it’s the opposite. Buyers feel the market has hit the bottom and now it’s on the upswing and worry they’ve missed crazy deals.”

Economic factors

The ten homes that sold for over a million dollars were located in the following towns: Bolton, Harvard, Shrewsbury,

Southborough and Westborough. The state Department of Labor and Workforce Development shows they have very low unemployment rates, well below the state average. All of these towns also faired quite well in our top high schools rankings.

Market averages

Fitzpatrick said she sells a lot more homes in $400-500,000 range. So what does that get you? Fitzpatrick said homes in that range will be about 2600 square foot,  that’s 15 years old in a family neighborhood, on an acre and a half of land and with central air. Fitzpatrick  said the average sale price is just over $500,000 in the Bolton area. Fitzpatrick said, “There’s much more activity in the lower to mid range market than in the high range markets. It is hard for homeowners to sell their homes when they are above one million dollars in this market.”

Appraisal Mistakes?

Diane DeCiccio, President of the Worcester Regional Association of Realtors told GoLocalWorcester that over the last 7 months the market has gone up. But there's been one big problem preventing sales. DeCiccio said, "The appraisals are what’s stopping a lot of transactions to make it to a closing table, because the appraisors sometimes come from outside the area and tend to value the homes below the selling price,  because they don’t know the market."

The low appraisals are making it difficult for the realtor to keep these transactions together.

Designing These Mansions

Dawn McLaughlin owns the Window Scene in Shrewsbury, which is a full services interior design company. McLaughlin said many homeowners are making little changes to their homes. “They are not doing soup to nuts. A lot of people are painting and freshening up their window treatments and changing out their rugs,” said McLaughlin.

McLaughlin said business has been steady, but what has been kept them alive is the bathroom and the kitchen renovations.

Most homeowners are putting the bigger projects on the back burner and instead ripping out these old clunky Jacuzzis and putting in steam and spa showers. 

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