The following is from Effective Demand Blog
Needless to say when the guy in charge of monetary policy says he has a exploding ARM it is news so I checked out the public records. While the details are certainly not juicy it leads me down another path of thought which I will get to.
Bernanke bought in [...]

Another interesting article from the Banker & Tradesman entitled: Setting the stage for the next housing bubble? To summarize, this year in the Boston area, just 3,500 homes were built. In 2005 at the height of the boom, more than 15,000 homes were built.
The following are excerpts from Scott Van Voorhis’s article on [...]

Okay, what’s happening is the Back Bay condo market?
Number of Back Bay condos for sale: 217
Avg. Back Bay list price: $1,728,978.00
Avg. askiing price per sq. ft: $1,090.00
Above is what’s being asked; below is what’s been selling in the last 3 months:
Back Bay condos sold: 106
Avg. Back Bay selling price: $1,198,698
Median Back Bay [...]

From Bloomberg: Harvard’s Feldstein Says U.S. Economy Still Mired in Recession
Restrained consumer spending suggests “2010 is going to be a very weak year,” said [Harvard University economics professor and former NBER president Martin Feldstein ] “Thrift in the long run is a very good thing, but increasing thrift as you come out of a [...]

Yet more good news on the economic front in Massachusetts: The state’s jobless rate fell to 8.8 percent last month.
It’s the state’s second straight month of a falling unemployment rate. The rate is still too high. A lot of jobs have to be generated before the economy (and housing market) is truly humming again.
But the [...]

From TIME Magazine: Person of the Year 2009 Extended Interview
TIME: Do you have a mortgage?
Bernanke: Oh, yes, we refinanced.
TIME: Oh, perfect. When?
Bernanke: About 5%. A couple of months ago.
TIME: Good time.
Bernanke: Yes. We had to do it because we had an adjustable rate mortgage and it exploded, so we had [...]

Congratulations to Vinay Shah for being the first to purchase a condo at The Clarendon, 400 Stuart Street #15B for $1,500,000, with a $600,000.00 mortgage.
On another note, I just found out that 100 Stuart Street (The W) is part of Back Bay, well, according to MLS it is. So let’s recap, Back Bay starts at [...]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, 56, was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine, the publication announced on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show this morning.
There were six finalists for “Person of the Year,” including U.S. President Barack Obama; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.’s co-founder and chief executive officer; the Chinese worker, an [...]

In Massachusetts, home sales have picked up for four consecutive months, according to The Warren Group. But some fear that the sales gains could be temporary once the homebuyer tax credit disappears in the spring. The Warren Group will release November home sales numbers next Tuesday.
File Under: Two thumbs up.

After reading this story, I get it. Why people hate real estate agents?
From the Hartford Courant, the theme of the story is this: list your condo below asking price, start a bidding war, if you (the seller) are offered asking price you want, tell the buyer, NO! Here’s how it works:
When David Chzaszcz put his [...]