Massachusetts Realtors are getting nervous about Fed plans to stop propping up the housing market. It looks like a major lobbying campaign is about to commence.
Clearly, the feds can’t keep funding all these mortgage securities and tax incentives. But at least one economist in the article says it might be a bit too early to [...]

This is a rap video made by a George Mason University economist.

Reversing a four-year trend of sliding sales, single-family home sales in Massachusetts crept up 3 percent in 2009 from 2008, according to new data from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
Median home prices, however, dipped 6.6 percent from 2008 and were almost 20 percent lower than the market peak in 2005.
An excerpt [...]

The headlines in today’s newspapers state that: “Housing sales fall by 16.7%” But how did the Boston condo market do? Well, according to LINK December ‘09 sales were up compared to the same month in ‘08.
According to sales numbers tracked by LINK:
December 2009
Number of Boston condo sales – 363
Avg. Boston condo sales price – $463,074.00
Median [...]

A new report come out today that shows Mattapan homes are selling “well above” the list price. Mattapan homes sold on average 100.56 percent of list price in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Banker & Tradesman via ZipRealty.
The report also noted that in the Bay State, Chatham and Boston’s Back Bay were at [...]

It feels like I’ve been hearing about “shadow inventory” — Boston proper condos that are in foreclosure but haven’t hit the market yet — forever. Yet no flood of foreclosures has yet inundated the market, and as a matter of fact, inventory has been quite scarce lately. Is there anything to this shadow inventory [...]

An interesting article from today’s Washington Post regarding the federal government’s plans to exit the mortgage markets: “For more than a year, the government pulled out the stops to revive home buying by driving down mortgage rates. Now, whether the housing market is ready or not, the government is pulling out.” But apparently not [...]

The owners of the iconic Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in New York are handing over the keys to the giant middle-class housing project in Manhattan.
When individual homeowners can’t pay their mortgage bills and creditors have to step in, they call it a “foreclosure.” When investment companies can’t pay their mortgage bills, they [...]

Is Obama’s program making things worse?

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The following information is from the local MLS database as of January 23, 2010, compared to (January 24, 2009) and (January 26, 2008).
Total # of condos for sale in Boston: 1,548 (1,608) (2,021)
Number of condos sold, past 30 days: 180 (148) (187)
Average days on market, sold units: 131 (110) (115)
Ratio, closing/sales price to list price: [...]