There are only 51 days left until the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit runs out. The extended tax credit deadline means you have to have your P&S signed by April 30th. So far out of top 7 Boston neighborhoods 190 condos have been sold under $500k (a typical threshold for first time buyers). If you’re interested in taking advantage of this tax credit before time runs call me this week to get started! 617-449-3642
The spring Boston condo market has arrived early this year! In the past week alone, 77 new condos have come on the market in Boston’s major neighborhoods. The majority of these new condos have come on the market in Back Bay, South End and South Boston. These 3 neighborhoods alone account for 63 of the new listings. It’s important to keep in mind that these lists don’t include new development condos. If you’re thinking of purchasing this spring you might want to start looking now, so as to not miss out on what’s coming on the market. If you’re thinking of listing your property for sale, I can tell you our office is swamped with buyers looking to purchase homes in these neighborhoods. Call us today to find out what your home can fetch, or email as contact@backbayrealtygroup.com
First 10 days of February 2010 market data:
Back Bay 2010
11 Listings Sold
Avg. Sale Price: $1,705,818
Avg. Price/ft: $1,010
Back Bay 2009
3 Listings Sold
Avg. Sale Price: $1,804,632
Avg. Price/ft: $1,115
Beacon Hill 2010
2 Listings Sold
Avg. Sale Price: $393,500
Avg. Price/ft: $766
Beacon Hill 2009
0 Listings Sold
Avg. Sale Price:
Avg. Price/ft:
It would seem that buyers are looking sooner this year than last year. Prices might be down slightly but inventory is moving.
January has come and gone, now it’s time to look back and see what happened in Back Bay and Beacon Hill sales. It’s looking pretty positive for the most part, but certainly looking better for Back Bay owners than Beacon Hill owners if you need to get your home sold.
Back Bay 2010
23 Condos Sold
Avg. Sale Price: $1,196,326
Avg. Price/ft: $960
Back Bay 2009
10 Condos Sold
Avg. Sale Price: $1,245,050
Avg. Price/ft: $871
Beacon Hill 2010
4 Condos Sold
Avg. Sale Price: $1,358,125
Avg. Price/ft: $1035
Beacon Hill 2009
6 Condos Sold
Avg. Sale Price: $280,500
Avg. Price/ft: $654
Since it’s now 2010 or Twenty Ten, I thought it would be a good idea to see what happened in Boston condo market in the first 10 days of the new decade.
Back Bay Condos:
6 New Listings with (4/6 under $550k)
5 Under Agreement (3/5 over $1 Million)
6 Sold (3/6 under $400k 2/6 over 1.3 Million)
Beacon Hill Condos:
0 New Listings
3 Under Agreement (List Prices from $339k-$1.25 Million)
1 Sold ($827,500)
South End Condos:
2 New Listings ($335k and $699k)
3 Under Agreement (List Prices from $300k to $750k)
1 Sold ($300k)
My Take: Back Bay continues to be where the action is. It’s where the highest number of new homes on the market are located and where the highest priced sales are happening. There are higher priced homes on Beacon Hill than in Back Bay but more of them seem to be selling in Back Bay.
Scarcity! That’s the buzzword luxury retailers across the country are trying to teach to consumers this year. Last year was a very different story, retailers had more merchandise than they knew what do with. This year that certainly won’t be the case. Retailers are learning that if you simply don’t offer more, customers are will to pay full price to get what’s out there. The New York Times even did a whole article on this idea.
Luxury retailers weren’t the only ones who forgot scarcity, luxury condo developers got stuck on this same train of thought. They forgot that part of what makes a luxury condo so expensive and attractive is the scarcity of them. They decided instead, to follow the philosophy of selling luxury to the masses. The only problem with this school of thought: a luxury good is no longer considered a luxury, when everyone can have one!
The condo market in downtown Boston is now flooded with “luxury” condos: 45 Province, W Residences, The Clarendon and the Bryant Back Bay just to name a few. As a result it’s looking more and more like, “The luxury condo has become the sad knockoff Chanel purse peddled along Canal Street.” *
To continue our fashion metaphor for a moment, this overstocking by developers means that just like the retailers, they too will be forced to have massive sales. Think of the recent auctions as the Black Friday Sales. (People know ahead of time that they are coming and they set the price for the remainder of the season.) The main difference between Black Friday Sales and recent auctions, this year the retailers aren’t restocking. The condo developers aren’t as lucky. Even if they sell half the units to get sales moving, they still have hundreds of condos left to sell.
So my take on all this, it’s going to be a long time before we sell out all these luxury buildings and this year it’s best to go shopping on Black Friday!
*Before I get all sorts of angry emails, I agree that some of the units in these buildings are truly stunning and incredible places. However, one must admit not all are on the same level. A condo with a stunning view of the brick wall less than 30 ft away should not be labeled a “luxury condo” just because it’s in the same building as the incredible penthouse.
That’s the question this article from the New York times asked over the weekend. In New York the Bachelor Pad maybe dead but in Boston I’d say it’s just down with the flu. (Not everyone everyone has it, but some people do and it’s not that bad.) I certainly have quite a few clients who updated their bachelor pads this year and some that just stayed put. A couple quit the lifestyle and moved in with their girlfriend, but even then they didn’t sacrifice like those in New York. The Clarendon, one of the most expensive rental buildings in Back Bay is currently out of 1 bed units and my guess is quite a few of those have been rented by single men. Still, I’ll put question out there, Bachelors of Boston are you downsizing this year?
I read an interesting article on Boston.com over the weekend, entitled Real Estate Deadbeats. The article talks about people who were no longer paying their mortgage but not leaving the house either. The “stay don’t pay” idea is one thought that doesn’t occur to most people, since most people assume that you will be evicted as soon as you stop paying. The truth however is slightly more complicated.
The article talks about a company called You Walk Away, which helps people when they decide to stop paying their mortgage. They clue them into the fact that, even if no mortgage payments are made, a person still owns that property until the bank legally and officially takes it back through the foreclosure process or the house is sold to someone else. As one lawyer put it:
“The banks can’t force you out until they own the property. You own the property even if you are late in payments, have a notice of default filed or a notice of trustee sale. Nothing can be done until the property has been sold at auction or the banks take it back.”
The most common advice given when someone decides to do this is to save all of their mortgage money and pay off any other debts. Any extra money should be used when it comes time to rent. This brings me to a conversation I had yesterday with a bank director. When I asked him what he was seeing when people stopped paying, he said the average time it took for his bank to foreclose on a property was 12-18 months. That’s a lot of money for people to put aside for fixing their other debts. I am by no means recommending this route for those people who are underwater, in fact I would consider this an absolute last resort; but it is an interesting route that more and more people are taking.
The fall has traditionally been a good time for buyers to go out looking because of the influx of properties that come on the market. This year is no different, with over 100 new condos coming onto the market in Boston since September 3rd. The low mortgage rates of last week means that hopefully some savvy buyers out there locked when the rates dipped to 5% or lower in some cases. The downtown however, isn’t the only area that’s trying take advantage of low mortgage rates and patient but hungry buyers.
The Nouvelle at the Natick Collection is also trying to hop on the bandwagon with their auction on October 4th. The plan to auction off 42 units has drawn lots of attention from people in Boston, and with homes starting at $160,000 they are incredibly affordable. The Nouvelle isn’t alone either, Milton Village in Milton just dropped their prices as well. In effort to get buyers before the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit closes prices have been dropped 10% in the past week. For more information on either of these properties or a free market report send us an email at contact@backbayrealtygroup.com or call 617-449-3642.
The question on everyone’s mind is when will the housing market rebound? For those in some parts of the country it already has. If you live in Boston or the Greater Boston Area, then it’s your lucky day, because you are living in one of those areas. The Case Shiller Index you see on the news every night talking about the country still having housing problems has shown Boston having modest increases in home prices for the past 3 months. We aren’t alone in our increases either, 18/20 markets that they monitor show increases in recent months.
Looking for further evidence the housing market is headed up, let’s go take a look at the data shall we? June home prices in Massachusetts were 2.6 percent above the month before and the number of single-family homes that sold statewide in July was 12 percent higher than a year ago. Even this past month Back Bay alone has seen a 26 percent increase in the average condo price compared to a year ago. If you’re interested in buying condo in Boston this fall is definitely the time to do it.
Boston Real Estate Market, First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit | chris | 
March 10, 2010 12:35 am | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe
