Under apparent pressure from City Hall, Trinity Financial is once again talking about putting a new Stop & Shop in the Bulfinch Triangle area, near the North End, the BBJ is reporting in its print edition (subscription required for online stories). Trinity had recently announced that Stop & Shop no longer wanted to open a [...]

Tim Warren, the respected CEO of the Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, isn’t one to mince words when times are tough. He calls them like he sees them. Most of his calls over the past three or four years have accurately reflected what’s going on in the markets (mostly negative, in recent times). [...]

The latest Case-Shiller housing report isn’t too encouraging: Nineteen of 20 metro markets saw a decline in home prices in October. One word: Gulp (assuming gulp is a word). Boston also saw a decline. But here’s the good news: Boston and most other U.S. cities have nevertheless still seen annualized increases in home prices, if [...]

Can you keep count of all the various mortgage-relief programs that the government has started? Have any of them really worked? Will the federal cavalry ever arrive to win the day? Let’s put it this way: Even Gen. George Armstrong Custer had a better record of attacking problems than the government. Here’s one reason: The [...]

Here’s a good article that asserts we may well have hit the housing-market bottom in the U.S. Let’s hope it’s true, for we’ve heard this prediction before in the past. Somebody has been predicting the “bottom” almost every week since 2009. But sooner or later, they have to get it right. And the most recent [...]

Tom Brady and Gisele’s new $20 million home in California looks like a Medici family castle in Italy. Guard towers? Are those guard towers? The Tuscany trend has officially gone off the rails.

Joe Nocera knocks down the idea that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae caused the housing-market collapse. The two FMs actually followed the private sector over the cliff; they didn’t lead the private sector over the cliff, Joe says It’s a persuasive argument. But here’s the thing: Can’t we all agree that the blame game isn’t [...]

Warren Buffett says the housing market is harming the U.S. economy and won’t rebound until inventory is drawn down. Buffett: Surprise, we had this huge inventory. … We’re drawing down on the inventory every day, I don’t know how long that takes, but I know when it’s through, when we’ve reached something close to a [...]

I’m sure more than a few local home sellers, buyers and agents can sympathize with the Sacramento gentleman whose home appraisals were all over the financial map. Fortunately, the Massachusetts housing market is less crazy than the housing market in California. But still … File under: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe

This is interesting: The Boston metro area isn’t in the top 10 list of metro areas with the highest median home prices in the third quarter. Boston usually makes such lists, but maybe it just wasn’t a good third quarter here.