8 Responses to “Boston condo prices are on the rise” »»

1. confused
   Comment by confused | 08/20/11 at 12:47 pm

   Why not title the article “Boston Condo prices are still below 2008 levels”?

2. chris
   Comment by chris | 08/20/11 at 1:35 pm

   We don’t know where they are because, unlike case schiller, these aren’t matched pairs…

3. mike
   Comment by mike | 08/21/11 at 1:11 pm

   Great point. Lots of bad, poorly applied data out there….with global equity mkts crashing again, I would bet prices will be below ’08 levels soon…just like the 30s.

4. John Ford
   Comment by John Ford | 08/21/11 at 2:49 pm

   Confuse, I could change the title of the article, but with that said, I didn’t hide the fact that prices are below 2008.

5. John Ford
   Comment by John Ford | 08/21/11 at 2:51 pm

   Chris/Mike, I’m not sure what you mean by “these aren’t matched pairs…” The real estate chart on this blog post is comparing 2nd Q results from the years 2005-2011 for the Boston Proper area. If you’re looking for a specific Boston Proper neighborhood let me know which one and I’ll do a Boston Real Esate Blog post on it.

   Second point, this isn’t my data that I collected, but it’s provided to me from LINK (a multiple listing service) and their sales data is obtained from the Suffolk Registry of Deeds

6. Mike
   Comment by Mike | 08/22/11 at 3:00 am

   Hi John – The “matched pairs” process used by Case Schiller attempts to look at the change in prices by looking at the sales of exact properties across time. This is done to try to control for mix, in cases (like Boston condos) where increases may be driven not by individual properties increasing in value, but rather by newer, more expensive properties dragging the average up.

   If the average of prices is increasing because of a flood of high end condos coming to market, that won’t benefit existing condo owners, whose units may be stagnant or even declining in value.

   Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) you need a TON of data and some very sophisticated statistical modelling to apply this approach. But if you could, it would be a better picture of what’s happening for the established owners.

   Regarding the title, I think it’s more relevant to know the direction of price movement rather than where we are in relation to historical price levels. It’s more important to know where we are going rather than where we have been.

7. John Ford
   Comment by John Ford | 08/22/11 at 3:23 am

   Thanks Mike, I see where you’re coming from. Unfortunately LINK doesn’t break down condo sales in that format, but I’m going to make a suggestion to see if they can. A while back Mary, another blog reader was requesting “resales” data as a comparison. I would like to do it myself but it would be too time consuming.

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