Lowell Deeds

The sales and foreclosure reports for the month of April have been loaded on our website. Newspaper articles in various papers during the past few days continue to state that home prices are declining and, as a consequence, more and more houses are sitting on the market for longer and longer periods of time. With prices sliding, I’ve been curious to see how actual sales prices compare with assessed values of property. To test this hypothesis, we’ve been making this comparison for sales in the city of Lowell. For this April, 189 deeds were recorded for properties in Lowell. Of that number, 63 were conveyances for $1 (typically a related party transfer) and another 10 were either new construction or had oddities with their values. All of these were excluded from our calculations. Of the remaining 116 deeds, 87 sold for more than the assessed value while 29 sold for less. Of those selling for above the assessed value, the average sales price was $265,270 while the average assessment was $218,683, a difference of 48,822. Of those selling for below the assessed value, the average sales price was $249,036 while the average assessment was $310,479 (making the selling price $61,443 below the assessed value).