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Residential Price Index Shows Relocation Homebuyers Market Comparisons

For homebuyers relocating to metro Boston its always a shock to discover how expensive housing costs are in our area. For whatever reason real estate markets like San Francisco, New York and Seattle always seem to grab the headlines when it comes to surging prices and housing market performance.

In terms of tools that visually show whats happening in real estate, I really like FNCs Residential Price Index. Their interactive tables and graphs quickly let visitors compare relative real estate market prices by metropolitan statistical area (MSA), ranking and region.

Relocating To Metro Boston?

Start playing with the data filters. You can quickly gauge housing prices in our MSA to your own and avoid the sticker shock so many relocation buyers experience upon starting their Boston home search.

MSAs are broadly defined geographies. Bostons MSA is defined below and youll note City of Boston neighborhood markets, particularly ones in the citys core tend to be significantly more expensive that outlying metro Boston real estate markets. Further, when looking at MSA comparisons you want to note that market data is shown relative to a national median score of 100. Below is the most current FNC Residential Price Index comparing the Boston MSA, the dark blue line, to the Composite-10 MSAs (Boston, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington DC), the red line. The light blue lines beyond the vertical dashed line indicate the predicted outlook for that MSA.

Residential Price Index: Boston MSA vs. Composite 10 MSAs August 2014

Looking at the historical data I think its interesting to compare Composite-10 MSA's real estate bubble market and market correction to Boston MSAs relatively modest bubble and market correction (January, 2000 to September, 2008).

Boston MSA Defined

The metropolitan statistical area has a total population of approximately 4,640,802 and is the tenth-largest in the United States. The components of the metropolitan area with their estimated 2012 populations are listed below.

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area (4,640,802) Boston, MA Metropolitan Division (1,926,030) Norfolk County, Massachusetts (681,845) Plymouth County, Massachusetts (499,759) Suffolk County, Massachusetts (744,426) Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA Metropolitan Division (2,292,833) Middlesex County, Massachusetts (1,537,215) Essex County, Massachusetts (755,618) Rockingham County-Strafford County, NH Metropolitan Division (421,939) Rockingham County, New Hampshire (297,820) Strafford County, New Hampshire (124,119)

Read more about the Residential Price Index here.