The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book reported continued improvements in the Boston and New England economies. The high-tech and software sectors are doing particularly well, along with manufacturing and staffing-services firms. Even commercial real estate is starting to see a thaw in business. But (and there’s always a ‘but’) your favorite sector isn’t doing all that well. From the Fed:
Residential real estate markets throughout New England experienced significant declines in sales and median prices in April compared to a year earlier. Contacts attribute the sales declines to the homebuyer tax credit, which boosted sales for the first half of last year. … Contacts throughout the region expect year-over-year declines to continue for the next few months because of last year’s homebuyer tax credit. Although several contacts believe that much of the New England real estate market has begun stabilizing, they caution that a lengthy recovery still remains.
Read the whole thing.
