The Boston Herald has a real doozy of a one-sided article musing about the “unfairness” of the mortgage deduction. This is how the media whips up a drumbeat that’s started by politicians. The article Is the mortgaged deduction dying? is from the McClatchy-Tribune News Service and has so many holes in it you could strain [...]

The following 2010 sales were obtained by LINK:
The Clarendon Back Bay Luxury Condos
Clarendon Back Bay condos sold in 2010: 42
Average luxury condo sales price: $1,713,321.00
Median luxury condo sales price: $1,595,000
Average luxury condo sales price per square foot: $1,119.00
————-
The Boston W Residences: Luxury Condos
Number of luxury condos that sold in 2010: 21
Average luxury condo sales price: [...]

Click on Back Bay condo chart to enlarge.
Number of luxury Back Bay condo sales
2005 – 674
2006 – 555
2007 – 578
2008 – 523
2009 – 406
2010 – 475

Click on Back Bay sales chart to enlarge.
Back Bay luxury condo sales price 2005 – 2010:
2005 – $690,000.00
2006 – $650,000.00
2007 – $656,000.00
2008 – $753,750.00
2009 – $700,000.00
2010 – $787,000.00

Four Housing Issues To Watch in 2011

“Metro Boston’s housing market was affected by the real estate bubble earlier—and less severely— than other metro areas around the country” and sale price declines have brought homes to historic affordability levels, according to a paper by the Concord Group, a real estate consultancy. Prices peaked in 2005 at $462,160 (in 2010 dollars) and have since [...]

The best-selling author of the children’s book “The Polar Express” just bought a $3.63 million home in Beverly, according to Banker & Tradesman. The author, Chris Van Allsburg, bought an 1883-era, 12,400 square-foot mansion on Paine Avenue. Information found on Wikipedia mentions his home is in Providence, RI, so we’ll take this as a net gain [...]

Robert Shiller says the decline in October’s Case-Shiller house-price index was much worse than expected.
He also says that if house prices keep falling this fast, the economy will have “serious reasons to worry.” Shiller expects the panicked Congress will issue another home-buyer tax credit to stop the fall of real estate prices. As Shiller says: [...]

The real estate news video above is from NECN: Peter Howe, detailing newly released data which indicates that it’s getting harder and harder to sell a home or condo in Massachusetts. For the fifth month in a row, sales were down in November — by nearly 30 percent from a year earlier.

Mortgage Rates Down Today!