Ever lived in a house where you suddenly found out you had to pay $30,000 for a new septic system?
That sort of thing can happen if you live in a condo, as well, unfortunately.
In this case, the trustees of the condo association decided that the building needed major structural repairs – about $18 million worth [...]

Over dinner (and drinks, oy…) this evening, I learned all about the San Francisco real estate market, from some new friends of mine.  They told me that they have heard of people getting together and buying buildings to live in.  At some point, the people turn the units into condos, and then sell them off.  [...]

I’m not a fan of rent stabilization / rent control laws.  Here’s one reason why.

By Patrick O’Gilfoil Healy, The New York Times
The woman had brilliant blond hair, a decent job and a rent-stabilized apartment on West 88th Street, but she longed for grander things. She yearned to cast off Manhattan and her job teaching [...]

Okay, here’s a situation you may not want to encounter.
Buyers closed on their new homes, and moved in, and now the City of New York is saying that their building wasn’t zoned for residential usage, meaning they might not be able to sell their units…ever.
Um, yeah, that’s not a good thing.

By William Neuman, New York [...]

I’m a big fan of parents buying a condo for their college-bound child.
Here’s details on how some are going about it.
By Jeffrey Steele, Barron’s
Most parents don’t have much choice about their children’s college living arrangements. When the kids gravitate to dormitories, fraternity or sorority houses or off-campus apartments, their parents get stuck with the tab, [...]

Mortgage loan rates will continue to stay low, and home and condo prices will continue to rise, as long as financial institutions can sell their mortgage-backed securities to foreign investors.  It’s that simple.
By Ruth Simon, James R Hagerty & James T Areddy, Wall Street Journal

Strong demand for mortgage-backed securities from investors world-wide is allowing American [...]

Below is a report of sales and listing activity for the past week. Information is derived from LINK, the online database that is used by most Boston real estate agents.
New listings: 125
Back on market (listings that went under agreement but deals fell through): 16
Price changes (almost always downward, but some go up): 74
Under agreements: 65
Off [...]

The owners of Fenway Park have asked the National Park Service to establish Fenway Park and two other buildings as a historic district.  Now, I’m no fool, so I won’t be telling you what I think they should do with Fenway Park (if I did, no one reading this would ever hire me as their [...]

If you want to read a good analysis of what’s going on in the Massachusetts home & condo sales market, I can highly recommend the Massachusetts Association of Realtors’ website.
They collect monthly sales data and compare it to previous months’ and years’ results.

They just recently tore down the old Gaiety Theater (which was news to me, but I haven’t been down in Chinatown for awhile).  Now, don’t be thinking you might have gone to the movies there, recently – it was nothing but a old concrete building, mostly boarded up, and in serious disrepair, for years.  Some [...]