The Barnstable County Register of Deeds reports that for Mashpee, average individual property sale values rose 15.7% from July 2004.
The average sale price for property under $1mm in Mashpee was $406,810 in July 2005.
Across the Cape, the average sale price was $393,473, a 9.2% increase from last July.
Housing Assistance Corporation’s 2004 report shows the average cost of a single-family home on Cape was $445,920. That requires an annual household income of $120-140,000, which translates to maybe the top 10% of the entire population of Massachusetts.
In the way of comparison to reality, the 2003 average annual Upper Cape salary for one category of professionals, teachers, was a little over $49,000, a little higher than the average household income for all Cape residents.
So, if only the richest 10% of Massachusetts can afford a mortgage on the AVERAGE Cape Cod home, how do people afford to buy here, and why do prices continue to rise?
We’ve seen a lot of for-sale signs and have heard tales of woe from numerous realtors, and volumes are, indeed, down from last summer, around 8-9%. Why this hasn’t translated yet into lower prices is an interesting question, especially since so many properties are second homes.
That’s probably due to a couple of factors: while some fixed costs like gas and insurance are higher here, property taxes are among the lowest in Massachusetts; computation of average household income is understated because it includes retirees who own their homes outright; and there are a lot of pre-retiree homeowners like my neighbor, who bought her house 3 years ago, lives here on weekends and in the summer, and will move here permanently next spring.
These factors keep the pressure on the price of housing, which is fine for older people with high equity properties to turn over, but as we all know, lousy for younger folks who are entering the market for the first time.
One of the things that intrigue me about all this is the impact on social and political attitudes.
From the weekly polls in the Cape Cod Times, one could assume that people here are pretty liberal in outlook. Issues like stem cell research get consistent thumbs-ups, and the Bush Administration gets consistent thumbs-down.
I’ve written before about seeing people of retirement age in Mashpee Town Meeting speak strongly in support of budget overrides for the public schools. Our congresspeople and state reps are almost all left-leaning Democrats.
On the other hand, I’ve also written about how universally dismal the work environments are here. Stories of employees being treated badly are so common that they are written off as a “welcome to the real world” normality.
Informed people who work in social service agencies report that rates of homelessness, domestic violence and alcoholism continue to score among the highest in the state. Discrimination in employment and housing is acknowledged to be a major but little-discussed problem.
One wonders if, over time, as the population here continues to age and younger families continue to leave, if the social infrastructure will become more stable, or less so: will the predicted influx of us Boomers, with our supposed caches of big money, college educations and 60’s era social consciousness, be good or bad for the Cape?
I don’t know the answer, but I’m not betting the farm that I’ll be in a position to stay here forever, or that my son and DIL will, either.
Then again, on a sublime weekend like this one, one can try to concentrate on the goodness of the moment and at least temporarily put worries about the future aside.