GREATER SPRINGFIELD – The difference between the four western counties and the rest of the state’s housing market can be seen in sales statistics.

The median price for a single-family home established in 2019 is $400,000 for the Commonwealth. This information was supplied by The Warren Group.

According to information supplied by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR), in Hampden County, that median price for 2019 was $213,200. In Franklin Country, the median value was $226,250. Hampshire County had the highest values, with $291,750 as the median.

All of these amounts represent increases over the values of 2018.

Eric Berman, director of Communications for MAR assigned at least part of the reasons prices are increasing are due to the supply lagging to the demand.

He told Reminder Publishing, “People want to live and work in Massachusetts, but our supply of homes is at historically low levels. If we’re not able to produce more housing, those people are going to move elsewhere. That would be bad news for our economy.”

MAR President Kurt Thompson, explained to State House News, “Looking back at 2019, two themes dominated the year. The first is that the number of single-family homes for sale remained historically low for the entire 12 months; and second, that $400k is the new normal for statewide median home prices. Hopefully, 2020 is a year when housing production is made a priority.”

 Warren Group CEO Tim Warren said in a statement, “The trend was fairly obvious all year long – 2019 was another record-setting year for Massachusetts real estate prices. Despite a slight dip in single-family sales compared to 2018, the streak of the median sale price increasing on a year-over-year basis continues. The last time the year-end median single-family home price declined was at the tail end of the housing market crash in 2011. Barring anything drastic, I fully expect this record-setting trend to continue in 2020.”

There were a total of 59,136 single-family home sales in 2019, according to The Warren Group, marking a 1.2 percent decrease from 2018. The Warren Group also reported Wednesday that the year-end median sale price hit $400,000, a 3.9 percent increase over 2018 and the first time on record that it’s reached that level.

No Massachusetts county recorded a decline in median sale prices for single-family homes in 2019 on a year-over-year basis, the Warren Group said. Middlesex County, the state’s most populous, recorded the most single-family home sales, with 11,777 transactions and a median sale price of $557,500.

The increasing cost of real estate coupled with the growing traffic congestion has been cited as concerns that threaten the business health of the Commonwealth.

Gov. Charlie Baker put a spotlight on the housing market in his State of the Commonwealth speech reiterating that demand outpaces supply. Again urging lawmakers to take up his bill that aims to spur housing production by relaxing the threshold required to make local zoning changes from a two-thirds majority to simple majority, he said current zoning laws create “a wall between the well-off and the up-and-coming.”

Baker said, “For the sake of our communities, our young people, our seniors and our families, let’s find the common ground on housing policy that must be in here somewhere.”