For most of the last decade, Boston condos and Boston single-families moved together. They have stopped.

Through the first half of this year, single-family medians across Greater Boston held their ground and in several towns topped a million dollars again. Condo medians did not follow. Inventory is a large part of the reason: the number of homes for sale in the metro is up double digits year over year and new listings have been running well ahead of last year's pace, a sharp reversal from a market where nothing came on. Mortgage rates in the mid-six percent range have made monthly payment math slightly easier than a year ago, but that relief flowed to buyers of houses, not units.

If you own a condo, this is the market telling you something specific. Here is what it is saying.

Why the two are separating

Fee inflation compounds. A condo owner's monthly cost is the mortgage plus the fee, and fees have moved up faster than almost anything else in the ownership stack. Insurance renewals on masonry buildings, elevator and facade capital work, and deferred reserve funding all land in the fee. A buyer qualifying at a payment ceiling absorbs a fee increase by lowering the price they can pay for your unit. Two hundred dollars a month of fee growth is roughly thirty thousand dollars of purchasing power at current rates.

Special assessments have become a pricing variable. Buyers are asking for reserve studies and reading minutes now in a way they were not three years ago. A pending facade project or an under-reserved association shows up as a discount, not as a negotiation.

Supply is elastic where it is easiest to build. Condos are the product Boston adds. Single-family houses inside 128 are effectively fixed supply. When the market softens, the segment with new inventory absorbs the softness.

The remote-work shift favored square footage. The households with the most equity kept moving toward houses with a room to work in. The one-bedroom and studio segment lost the buyer who was previously willing to overpay for location.

Where the split is sharpest

The divergence is not uniform, and this is where owners get their pricing wrong by looking at citywide numbers.

Holding up: Two-bedroom, two-bath units with parking and outdoor space in Charlestown, the South End, and the North End. Renovated, low fee, functional layout. There is still a bidding-war segment in Boston and this is it.

Soft: One-bedrooms and studios in high-fee full-service buildings. Units in associations with known capital projects. Anything with an original kitchen at a price that assumes the buyer will not notice.

Watch closely: The high end. Belmont, Brookline, and Newton have each posted very different numbers this year, with some inner-ring towns showing sharp year-over-year corrections and inventory up meaningfully. High-end condo owners in those markets are competing against houses that are now within reach.

The question to actually ask

Not "should I sell." The question is: what does another year of holding cost me, and what does it buy me?

The honest math has three inputs.

Fee trajectory. Pull your association's last three budgets. If fees are compounding at six or seven percent, you are watching your buyer pool shrink every year you wait.

Capital pipeline. If your building has a facade, roof, or elevator project coming in the next thirty-six months, selling before it is voted is a materially different transaction than selling after. Once an assessment is voted, it is disclosed, and buyers price it at full value plus a risk premium.

Rate sensitivity. If rates ease further, condo demand improves and you sell into a better market. If inventory keeps climbing at the current rate, more supply offsets the rate benefit. Betting on both moving your way is a bet, not a plan.

If you are holding, do these three things

1. Get the reserve study. If your association does not have one, that is the finding.
2. Read the last twelve months of meeting minutes. Not the newsletter. The minutes. That is where the capital conversation actually happens, and it is what a buyer's attorney will read.
3. Fix the two things buyers price hardest. In Boston condos those are almost always the kitchen counter and cabinet fronts, and lighting. Neither is a renovation. Both change the photos, and the photos determine whether a soft market ignores your listing.

If you are buying

This is the first condo market in years with negotiating room, and the room is not evenly distributed. The units that sat are sitting for a reason and the reason is usually in the condo docs. The units that are actually undervalued are the ones in healthy associations that happened to list in July. Both look the same on Zillow.

I run condo-specific valuations that account for fee trajectory and the association's capital position, not just recent comps in the building. If you own a Boston condo and want to know what it is worth today and what holding for another year likely costs, send me the address and unit number.

Chris Remmes, Managing Broker, Remmes & Co. [email protected] | 617-398-0015