Time is ticking on the Boston conforming loan limits clock. On October 1st, the maximum on jumbo-conforming loans, up to $729,750 $532,750.00 will drop to $465,750.00 in the Suffolk County area (Boston).
While October 1st seems like a few months away, for a mortgage to meet the current jumbo-conforming standards, it must close by September [...]

Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard University, doesn’t think President Obama’s new mortgage modification plan will help the housing market:
A massive refinancing effort is likely to have little impact on the economy or foreclosures or housing prices. What it would do, however, is hurt our government’s already precarious balance sheet by reducing the payments [...]

President Obama is going to be coming out with a new jobs bill after Labor Day. I’m all for this. I’ve mentioned on this real estate blog over and over again, the best way to help the national housing sales slump is with jobs, jobs, jobs. But in the meantime, I have one question for [...]

You think the last housing bubble was enormous? Meet the education bubble.
The next subprime crisis will come from defaults on student debts, starting with for-profit colleges and rising to the Ivy League. The parallels with housing are striking. In both, the written warnings aren’t understood, especially on penalties and interest rates. And in both, it’s [...]

I was just viewing Boston.com web site and I noticed in the business section they ran a story from AP News stating that the under agreement contracts dropped in July:

The number of people who signed contracts to buy homes fell in July, further evidence that the depressed housing market remains a drag on the economy.
I [...]

What is the absorption rate for Back Bay condos? Before I answer that question, let me first explain what the term absorption rate means in real estate.
Much like a weathervane that measures the direction and intensity of the wind, the absorption rate in real estate is one method to measure  the direction/ intensity of the Boston real [...]

This might not be getting as much hype as say Hurricane Irene – but I think it’s interesting.
A Beta release mobile app has created a marketplace for public parking spaces, connecting those vacating for those searching for one – for a fee.
We’ve all been there, late for an appointment and desperately driving in circles looking for [...]

By far, the NYT has the best Irene tracker graphic, pinpointing exactly where the eye of the hurricane tropical storm is at any given hour.
As of 7:15 a.m. this morning, the graphic had the eye of storm off the coast of southern New Jersey.
Frankly, the estimated timetable of the storm has been all over [...]

Mish Shedlock uncorks on the Obama administration’s grand plan to fix the entire housing market by waving a magic loan-modification wand over it:
The idea that you can do something at no cost to fix the housing market is pure lunacy. I am not sure which of the following terms applies best:
1. Holy Grail of Housing
2. Free Lunch
3. Perpetual [...]