NORTHAMPTON — This could be your house.
It’s mostly empty with a few furnishings left to tease your imagination. You wander through and try to project your life onto the rooms — Christmas, unloading groceries, movie nights, and laundry on the floor.
As you test the faucets and climb the stairs, you can hear footsteps as strangers tramp through the other rooms, wondering the same things: “Is this in my budget?” “Does it have the things I need?” “Could I build a life here?”
This could be your house — or it could be the house of any of the other 60 people who pass through it with you at an open house.
The housing market in Massachusetts is flooded with competition. Statewide, median prices for single-family homes have edged past their previous peaks — set during the height of the real estate bubble in 2005.
What’s more, after shaking off the last recession, the number of people looking for houses has been increasing, which for some has meant bidding wars and months of house-hunting, according to local real estate agents.
“The market is busier and we still lack inventory. We still have many more buyers than houses for them,” said Linda Rotti, manager with Jones Group Realtors in Amherst. “It’s a tough time for buyers.”
In June, the median sale price for a single-family home in Massachusetts reached $372,000 — the highest in state history, according to The Warren Group, publisher of real estate data for New England.
Although demand in more affluent communities has driven up the statewide median sales price, pockets of the Pioneer Valley are seeing similar booms, including in Northampton, even if the prices are not quite as high.
The median sale price for a single-family home in the Pioneer Valley was up by about 2 percent to $209,000 in June compared to the same month last year.
In Hampshire County, median sale prices rose by nearly the same percentage — from $255,000 to $260,000 during the first six months of 2016 compared to the same period last year.
Inventory has fallen 28.5 percent in the Valley in the past year, to 2,210 single-family listings, and average time on the market has fallen below 100 days for a property, according to the June report from the Realtor Association of Pioneer Valley in Springfield.
After 13 years working in the industry, Craig Della Penna, an agent in Northampton, had his best year in 2015. By June of this year, he said, he already matched his previous record of closed sales, which is surprising given that he is usually busiest in the fall.
Millennials are at the core of the boom, Della Penna said. Often, they are first-time homebuyers, drawn to walkable areas with a vital downtown center.
Bidding wars have become so common that Della Penna encourages his clients to write letters to sellers as a way to distinguish themselves and make an emotional appeal.
“In every multiple-offer situation this spring, my buyers have prevailed because they wrote a letter, talking about who they are and why they love the house so much,” Della Penna said. “For sellers who have been there for over 15 years, they want to hear about why someone loves their house. It’s not so much all about the money.”
Andrew Frechette — who just sold his house at 26 Straw Ave. in Florence — made his decision based off a letter after receiving multiple offers, ultimately accepting a bid over the asking price.
Frechette spent 26 years in the house, raised two children and made renovations himself. More than money, Frechette said he wanted to sell his house to someone who would appreciate it.
“In the letter they told me about the older daughter’s response when she walked in the house. She was just in love with it. At the end they said, ‘This is our dream house. This is what we’ve been looking for,” Frechette said.
“It made me feel like the 26 years I’ve put into it, all the renovations, have been for a reason, not just for me but for people in the future.”
The intense demands on buyers — letter writing, potential bidding wars, tough deadlines — are a lot to navigate, especially for people in a time crunch.
Cristen Nagle of Northampton and her husband have been house-hunting for about a month. With two young children about to start school, Nagle wants a house she won’t have to spend time renovating that still fits her price range.
“Our rent keeps going up but our wages aren’t, so we thought it’d be best to buy a house and not have to deal with that anymore,” Nagle said, while visiting a home for sale in Florence on Sunday.
“If we move towns, we have to think about where we’re going to enroll the kids in school and it’s just kind of a tough time for anyone with a regular budget. There’s a lot of uncertainty.”
Alexis Greenblatt, of Florence, is dipping her toes in the home-buying waters by going house-hunting with her friends, even though she’s not looking yet herself.
“For me it’s fun, because I get to look around and be reminded about what’s important to me in a house,” Greenblatt said. “It’s good to get a feel for the market before I dive in.”
Intense competition is driving buyers to pay well above asking price, even when it isn’t worth it, said Chuck Conner, broker at Taylor Real Estate in Easthampton.
“We’ve seen a couple of situations where a property is very desirable and in nice condition and bidding up way over asking price. In one case it sold way above the actual value,” Conner said.
“The important thing for a buyer is not to get caught up in that bidding process and overbid. You have to be comfortable with what you’re doing.”
Being well-educated on the market is crucial for prospective buyers, said David Murphy, managing broker of The Murphys Realtors in Northampton, especially when it comes to setting their own boundaries.
“People don’t generally walk into a house and buy the first one they see. To be confident enough to make the right offer you need to look for a while,” Murphy said.
“Lots of people get to the point where they think, ‘I don’t like it, but if I wanna buy a house this is what I gotta pay to get it,’ because it’s reasonable to assume that the next person will if you won’t.”