The NAR reports: July Existing-Home Sales Fall as Expected but Prices Rise.
Existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, dropped 27.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units in July from a downwardly revised 5.26 million in June, and are 25.5 percent below the 5.14 million-unit [...]

Lookng for a Boston apartment for September 1st? According to MLS, 818 apartments are still avail (mostly for Sept). Here’s just a sample:
Back Bay apartments avail – 116
Beacon Hill apartments avail – 46
Brighton/Allston apts avail – 75
Charlestown apts avail – 27
Dorchester apartments – 99
Midtown apartments – 42
South Boston apts avail – 41
South End apts avail [...]

Fortune Magazine lists five new normals that really will stick:
1. Long-term unemployment
2. Renting over owning
3. Saving over spending
4. Staycations over vacations
5. Higher taxes for ‘the rich
Do you agree?

I have a ten plus unit building for sale in Beacon Hill, asking price $2,600,000 or $325.00 per sq ft. More info please call Linda Mitrano at 617-512-4557 or call 617-595-3712.

Homeowners in Boston still think house prices will go up 10% per year … David Streitfeld at the NY Times wrote this interesting article today:
In an annual survey conducted by the economists Robert J. Shiller and Karl E. Case, hundreds of new owners in four communities — Alameda County near San Francisco, Boston, Orange County [...]

You might find this of interest. I just came across this web site www.condo.com, which allows one to search by “price reductions — newest to oldest”. Today, I searched for Boston, MA and it returned 349 listings with price cuts in the last 27 days.
To view these price reductions click here.

Redfin looked up the numbers for all Suffolk County sales listings put on the market in 2009, to see how many had sold by August 11, 2010. The answer? 36.1%.
The survey looked at homes that were listed for sale last year in Suffolk County and about 36% of those listings had sold by August 11, [...]

From the Banker & Tradesman:
Bruins netminder Tuukka M. Rask has purchased a Charlestown townhouse for $1.29 million.
The 2,513-square-foot condominium features three bedrooms, 3 ½ bathrooms, two fireplaces, two private decks and two parking spaces, according to listing information.
Rask bought the property at 19 Constellation Wharf in the Navy Yard, which overlooks the Boston skyline.
File Under: [...]

Real estate sales are up in these two Boston neighborhoods:

Stephen J. Dubner, NYT journalist and co-author of the book Freakonomics, asks the following question at the Freakonomics/Times blog: How Would You Simplify the Financial Reform Bill?
The rules were simple: 5 suggestions, 500 words.
The answers are here . .