From the NY Times: The Case for More Stimulus. Excerpt:
… Washington is not providing a coherent plan for effective stimulus. The Senate has been hamstrung for nearly a month over the most basic relief-and-recovery boost: an extension of unemployment benefits. The Obama administration has called for an expensive crowd-pleaser of dubious effectiveness: sending every [...]

The following is for the period ending October 24, 2009.
Units on market: 1,988
Average days on market: 128
Median price: $405,000
Average price: $683,034
Price changes, last thirty days: 502
Average price change: 4.02%
Average $ price change: -$22,412
Under agreement: 287
Average days on market: 107
Sold, last thirty days: 261
Months of supply: 7.62
Average days on market: 90
Original list to final sales price: [...]

I don’t normally report on Boston suburban sales but I thought Scott Van Voorhris’s article in the Banker & Tradesman was interesting, especially regarding the new difficulties in obtaining jumbo loans. Here are some highlights from his article:
Despite some promising signs over the past few months, prices in roughly 80 percent of the towns and [...]

From today’s Boston Globe:
Single-family home sales in Massachusetts increased for the third consecutive month in September, and the median price for homes sold dropped 1.4 percent to $285,000 from $289,000 from September 2008, the smallest drop in year-over-year monthly median home prices in about two years, the Warren Group said in a report on local [...]

Scott makes a nice catch about a Roxbury couple that plans to live in their new “green” home without a furnace.
How will they heat the house through the cold winter months? The sun, body heat, and a lot insulation, Etc. They may be right. But one has to believe that they’re going to need a [...]

Greater Boston Housing Report Card Shows City Is Less Affordable Than Ever. From B&T
Despite a value decline of 18 percent since the peak of the real estate market in 2005, housing in Greater Boston is less affordable than ever, and that significantly threatens the region’s economic future.
That was the conclusion of the 2009 Greater Boston [...]

From Bloomberg News:
The U.S. Congress probably won’t extend the tax credit for first-time home buyers, according to a note sent by ISI Group Inc.’s Washington research analysts.
“There could be an agreement reached as early today on the Reid/Baucus amendment that would PHASE OUT (not extend, as we originally understood when the idea was [...]

Government investigators revealed today that fraud is rampant in the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit program. Over 100,000 taxpayers have tried to cheat the system, the IRS says. Some of filers for the credit were just four years old.
The program allows people who haven’t bought a home in the past three years to claim up [...]

“Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.” That was a line from last night’s episode of Mad Men. The show’s sub-plot was how a dog food company was losing market share because it was learned that its product was made out of horse meat. In testing, the dog owners were pleased with how much [...]

Reading between the lines, this article may be encouraging for those who enjoy today’s lower home values — and discouraging for those wanting to sell their homes relatively soon at better prices.
No one really knows how the Massachusetts economy will fare once a recovery takes hold. We may have a stronger inititial recovery compared to [...]