Surreal and intricate, these “scary” Halloween pumpkin carvings deserve a double take.  

 
“Real estate sales are unlike other financial transactions. You can place a rough inherent value on a stock or bond by looking at fundamentals: a company’s profits, price-to-earnings ratios, quality of its products and management, and so forth. But a house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. That’s a very personal, [...]

Click photo to enlarge.
Grantham has some fun at the Fed’s expense:
The Ruinous Cost of Fed Manipulation of Asset Prices: My diatribe against the Fed’s policies of the last 15 years became, by degrees, rather long and complicated. So to make it easier to follow, a summary precedes the longer argument. (For an earlier attack on [...]

Boston Massachusetts Mortgage Rate Update is a resource for potential Homeowners and current Mortgage Borrowers to understand what economic data is relevant and what the situation is with mortgage Interest Rates. Brian Cav will provide a opinion as to whether you should lock or float your Home Mortgage.

Fortune magazine senior editor at large Allan Sloan goes on quite the rant about foreclosure-gate in a column today in the Washington Post. It’s the kind of “I’m mad as hell and won’t take it anymore” rant you’d expect in the comments section of a blog, but instead is an entire column. But it’s not [...]

According to this celebrity report, Shaq is not long for Sudbury and after dithering over local options, is looking for permanent digs in Back Bay. Or maybe it’s all a stunt for the TV show. Anyone hear anything? Let us know.

The Boston Globe reported today:
The town of Weston is getting still more attention for its pricey housing, ranking 97th in the US in Forbes Magazine’s annual list of most expensive zip codes.
Weston’s 02493 zipcode is the highest Massachusetts zipcode on the Forbes list. In all, there were 13 Massachusetts zipcodes on the list, including 02481 [...]

A potential client asked me a question on the upcoming Bryant auction: What was the highest paid unit per sq. ft. in the Bryant so far (not including penthouse units since they’re not up for auction)? My research results may surprise you.
The highest price per s/f was $892. But this isn’t the surprising part. Guess who paid this [...]

Anyone who reads the Business Insider knows that some times the online paper veers into the pure speculation department. The top story at the moment breathlessly blares “Obama Now Has No Choice Except To Announce A Major Homeowner Bailout After The Election.”
Writer Joe Weisenthal opines that after the election pressure will build on the Obama [...]

If anyone was expecting a surprise for the Case-Shiller report for August, they’re not getting one. This is largely a what-we-expected story: home prices decreased in 15 of 20 cities the report tracks, and 17 of 20 saw a weakening of sales from July.
Boston saw August prices drop a very slim 0.3% from July. Boston, [...]