Talk about a bullish sign for the market. Not sure what Hingham Savings is paying, but I imagine it is north of $3.5M and then they’ll have to spend at least $500K on the build-out, so they are willing to spend $4M+ to become the fourth bank on Nantucket.
They are a conservative bank, so they must have very high expectations for the market to spend that type of money. Can’t blame them considering what the market is doing. October volume was $105M, November was $95M and YTD volume is $715M! With many deals getting pushed through before year-end because of the inevitable rise in the capital gains tax, total volume for 2012 should be at least $750M, compared to $530M in 2011. That is a 40%+ increase in dollar volume. That massive increase is not just because of the monster eight-figure sales this year, but also from a large increase in transaction volume. There were approximately 347 transactions in 2011. There have been 451 transactions YTD. 2012 should end with 475+ total transactions, which is a 37% increase over 2011. Hang on because there are no signs this market is slowing down, except, of course, if we run out of inventory…