We
We are halfway through 2024 and the most salient comment about the current real estate market on Nantucket is this: “It’s not 2021 anymore.” The acute pandemic years pushed the number of sales and prices to new levels and, as a result, we’ve been in a time of very low inventory and very high prices since 2020. This, coupled with the current interest rate climate, has slowed the activity level in some sectors of the Nantucket real estate market. In the decade prior to 2020, Nantucket averaged about 500 transactions annually. This number shot up to a high of 825 sales in 2022, for $2.3 billion dollars. In 2023 there were only 333 transactions (for $1.1 billion dollars) and in the first half of 2024 there were 113 sales (for $463 million dollars). What has not declined since 2022 is the price of real estate on Nantucket. It is helpful to remember that nearly 60% of the island is preserved in perpetuity, much of it for public use, which has put enormous economic pressure on the other 40%. The average house was selling for $2,440,000 in 2019; today it is $4,535,000, an increase of 46%. The average price of a vacant lot in 2019 was $1,453,000; today it is $3,440,000, up an astounding 57% in 4 years. There is no indication that selling prices will be moderating any time soon. However, if historical trends hold true, we are still on track to exceed $1 billion in sales this year, as we did in 2017-2019 and last year.