There has been much chatter on these boards about the impact the casino will have on home prices. Based on comments I've heard anecdotally from home sellers & realtors in the area, I believe home prices have already taken a hit in Milford, due to the mere threat of a casino coming to down. I sincerely hope that I am wrong.
In an effort to get a better understanding of what is really happening in the marketplace, I scanned Zillow for properties sold in the past 3 months, with a prior sale in the past 10 years (not including houses flipped since 2011, when the casino chatter began). To be sure I could have missed a few homes while I was pulling the data, as this was an entirely manual exercise.
I found 23 properties that fit the criteria. I then compared the change in the value of the property (from the date of the prior sale to the date of the recent sale) to the change in the average home sold in Massachusetts over the same period. All data was pulled directly from Zillow, so anyone can check it.
Find out what's happening in Milfordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In any event, the Zillow data shows that the 23 properties that fit my criteria underperformed the average home price in Massachusetts by an average of 8.2%. Only 4 of the 23 properties outperformed the state average.
Now it’s entirely possible that something else is driving the underperformance in Milford home prices, but I would contend that in all likelihood the threat of the casino is driving this trend. The data supports the theory that the threat of the casino has reduced the number of potential home buyers in town, resulting in the law of supply and demand pushing prices downward.
Find out what's happening in Milfordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The good news for Milford homeowners is that they can do something about this & take the issue off the table with a NO vote on November 19th.
I will attempt to post all of the data in the next entry, but am not sure how it will format within this blog.