Archive for January, 2008
January 25, 2008
I’m a Brighton booster. The neighborhood is convenient to downtown, affordable, and largely T-friendly. But let’s be honest — parts of Brighton are also ugly with a capital U. An overload of students has made some parts of this neighborhood, noisy, trashy and not very pretty to look at. That being said, Brighton has improved tremendously in recent years and things are looking better and better. New luxury condo developments are going up, Brighton Center has been hippified (there’s even a Starbucks) and pockets of the neighborhood are filling up with more young professionals, young families and fewer students. The restaurant scene is even starting to get swank. In fact, I think anyone considering buying in Brookline should also consider buying just along the Brighton border, as you can basically enjoy most of the benefits of Brookline, but without the high pricetag. Single-family and two-family homes between Brighton Center and Oak Square are much more affordable than comparable houses in Cambridge or even Somerville. And many parts of Brighton are tree-lined, close to the T, and within walking distance of shopping and restaurants. So Brighton can be a winner for the right person. Check out these properties with reduced prices that might work for those willing to look on the brighter side of Brighton.
1988 Commonwealth Avenue, Apt 2, 999 square feet, reduced to $399K from $409K — I’ve been in this condo, which is nicely put together and overlooks a park and the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. It’s a great place, but let’s face it, it’s still expensive for Brighton, even with the view. After all, there’s no parking and the place is not huge. At $399K, I might just consider wandering over to Brookline for better transportation connections, shops, and services. Then again, there’s that view…
533 CAMBRIDGE ST , This luxury condo building is not finished yet, but prices started off much higher than they are today. Just recently a two bedroom unit that was $439K slipped another couple of thousand down to $437K. This is still pretty expensive for Brighton, but the price includes two garage parking spaces, and it IS new construction. My bet is that more negotiating can whittle prices over there even lower.
2 MENLO ST #1, $509K, down from $518K in mid-December. At 2,262 square feet, this 2 bedroom, 3 bathroom condo is an incredible deal, and is exactly why I think Brighton may be the hot neighborhood of the future. This place is right next door to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, and has easy access to the Mass Pike and bus lines. It’s just down the street from the shops of Brighton Center and just a few blocks from all the ethnic restaurants of Allston Village. It’s the kind of place that would be a gazillion dollars if it were located in comparable neighborhoods such as East Cambridge, Inman Square or Central Square.
5 SOUTH ST #3, $349,500, down from $359K — Two beds, one and a half baths and 1,170 square feet. The kitchen needs some updating, but the exposed brick is nice and it’s extremely convenient for anyone working at Boston College.
January 24, 2008
Which would you believe, indeed. UniversalHub posed a seemingly-obvious question on Wednesday, but if you’re a potential buyer in the Back Bay or Beacon Hill, you might just find yourself siding with the much maligned daily.
Yes, foreclosures did go up in ‘07, but they didn’t go up all that much - certainly nowhere near the levels reached the last time bad mortgages dropped an R-bomb on the local economy. And other than the Kenmore/Fenway area, Back Bay and Beacon Hill have been the least-hard-hit by the increase.
If you’ve already got the money to buy, this widely prophesied recession is the best thing that could happen to you. Decreased demand has already turned in slower sales, and that should soon translate to significantly lower costs for buyers. Throw in some freshly-slashed mortgage rates, expansion of high-end development city-wide, plus a handful of overextended speculators needing to sell off property ASAP, and you’ve got what could most modestly be termed a buyer’s market.
So take a look at some new postings and save the ones you like as favorites. I’m a big fan of this sunny 5th floor two-bed with a renovated kitchen and a Mary Poppins-view over the rooftops of Charles Street, and this penthouse studio, which has another remarkable view, and more elbow room than entire buildings nearby. At $679,000 and $360,000, respectively, they’re good deals now. But with current rates and a softening market, a savvy buyer might make them a bargain for life.
January 23, 2008
Okay, so last time I wrote, I said that I hadn’t noticed prices in Brookline dropping like a stone, the way all the news reports suggest is happening in other communities around the country. Was I right? Here are a few recent sales on 2 bedroom condos with an average sales price in the last few months of between $430-495K. That means that you can now find a decent 2-bedroom condo of more than 1,000 square feet in Brookline for a smidgen less than the $500K that seemed to be the going rate in 2005-2006. But is that ever-so-slight price drop good enough to make Brookline affordable to the average homebuyer? Umm..not really. If you don’t have kids that need the school system, your best bet is to emigrate just over the border to Brighton, where comparable units can go for about $100,000 less! Tell me if you think I’m wrong, but I would even say that prices have moved up a tad in Brookline from the lows of December 2006. So much for the housing bust.
1 AUBURN COURT, UNIT 1, 1,170 square feet, 493K.
487 WASHINGTON ST UNIT 2, 1231 square feet, $489,5K
53 UNIVERSITY RD UNIT 1, 1433 square feet, $455K.
1856 BEACON ST APT 6F, 1020 square feet, $403,7K
45 LONGWOOD AVE., Apt 402, 1,134 square feet, $440K.
January 23, 2008
There used to be a tagline on Technorati that went, “55 million blogs, some of them have to be good.” We were somewhat comforted by that statement as we began to expand Sweet Digs, our local real estate blog, from Seattle to the Bay Area to Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. In only a year and a half, Sweet Digs had produced over 4,500 posts covering the West Coast. Some of them had to be good – and they were (so our readers tell us). Now we’re bringing Sweet Digs clear across the country to see if some of that New England win streak rubs off on us.
So we’ve hired a motley crew of real estate addicts to start covering Boston and Washington, D.C. neighborhoods. They are IT professionals, college professors, and broadcast journalists who moonlight as Redfin bloggers so they can write about whether prices have gotten out of hand or not.
One blogger is certain that when it comes to neighborhoods, up-and-coming is preferable to old-money-stagnant. I mean, who would want to live next to John Kerry or Jack Welch?
Another blogger beckons, no, dares you to abandon D.C.’s city life for the suburbs of Maryland.
It’s a good start and we promise it will get better. Get Sweet Digs delivered to your inbox by subscribing to the newsletter. If you have any feedback for us or tips on properties that you’d like our bloggers to cover send a message to tips(at)redfin(dot)com. We can even promote your open house on our blog, whether you’re a Redfin customer or not.
Let’s meet the Sweet Digs Boston team.
Alyk
Alyk resides in what she considers the greatest city in the world: Boston. As a cheerleader for the city, she’s learned to love, or at least appreciate, all things Boston, including impassible traffic, cold weather, and bad attitudes. Alyk loves celebrity gossip, and, somehow, she turned that love into a career. She wrote her first daily column for Suicide Girls in 2005, then quickly moved to A Socialite’s Life and Celebrity Baby Blog. Alyk also operates several websites of her own, including CelebWarship, MusicWarship, and the soon-to-be-launched BostonWarship. When Alyk isn’t enjoying the cozy, blue glow of her monitor, she tries to take advantage of city life. Exploring her favorite neighborhoods for hours at a time, she often wonders why anyone would choose to live elsewhere.
Cosmo Catalano
Cosmo Catalano hails from the far west of Our Fair Commonwealth, where red-blooded Massachusetts residents pronounce their Rs (but are a bit lazy with their intervocalic Ts). By day, he strives tirelessly to save the world by exposing the horrific inefficiencies of car-based culture; by night he does whatever he possibly can to afford living in places where he won’t need to drive. Though the urban environment does occasionally grate against his rural-bred sensibilities, Cosmo admits that being able to walk from bank to the bar is pretty freakin’ convenient.
Michael Martin
Mike Martin is a Professor in the Rhetoric Program at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, as well as a scribbler of literary fiction. He’s also a real-estate nut – “My friends call me ‘the land baron’ when I start to bend their ears about real estate.” When he’s not looking for free stuff for the house on Freecycle or Craig’s List, he’s obsessed by home improvement, gardening and cooking. Mike’s specific interest in real estate has a lot to do with the way young people in the Boston area cling to neighborhoods that “…bleed them dry. We have a friend who just looked at a 200 sq. ft. flat in Cambridge for $179,000! You can have a real condo for that kind of money in Salem or Beverly. And you can have a sweet little house, blocks from the best commuter rail service in the region, for a little more.” Watch Mike’s blog for information about what’s going on in the Beverly/Salem market, tips about how to save money while you’re moving or moving in, notes about green gardening and home improvements, and the occasional gourmet recipe.
Pamela Reynolds
Pamela Reynolds is a writer and painter, formerly a reporter and editor, who begins her days with a little bit of stretching, a fresh cup of coffee, and a quick review of the latest MLS listings. She knows it’s not normal and has therefore decided to make use of her obsession by becoming a real estate blogger. She is, however, currently trying to quit the Open House habit. (It’s the fifth time she’s tried to quit.) Pamela lives in Boston in a 100-year-old building with a dog, cat, and a husband who indulges her property fixation. She has lived in both the United States and Europe and has owned real estate in both places. She enjoys dog walks, movies and knocking down load-bearing walls whenever she can for more light.
Margaret Sanford
Margaret Sanford grew up in Cambridge but has been living in Somerville since 1997. Since her original move to Somerville ten years ago, she has purchased 2 condos, been a landlord, sold a condo and bought a single family using in a 1031 exchange. She bit her nails for almost all of 2005 when the market tanked and her beautiful, historical condo sat on the market for nearly a year before it finally sold. She’s also been through a near gut renovation of her current (and hopefully) permanent residence. She was lucky enough to come through this construction project with her marriage completely intact and still speaks very fondly of her contractor.
When she’s not blogging for Redfin or working at her IT job, she is frequently seen chasing her children (2 and 4) around Somerville and Cambridge.
January 22, 2008
I saw it last Fall during those endless afternoons when my kids and I were hanging out at the “Yellow Park” on Hanson Street in Somerville.
The park we were playing at is more officially known as Palmacci Park sits on the corner of Skehan and Hanson is one of the many neat things about this almost hidden, wonderful neighborhood. It’s just North of Beacon Street and runs between Park and Dane Streets. It’s like a little village. Unlike a lot of neighborhoods in Somerville, where there are ten different versions of the same house, all the houses are really different from one another. It’s full of teensey tiny streets barely wide enough for one car to squeeze through and houses that almost touch the sidewalks. Some of the houses are truly historic and others are brand new, but the neighborhood has a cohesive feel to it. The newer developments are easy to spot with their clean lines and landscaped lots, but they are they are in scale with the other houses around them.
Adjacent to the park at 44 Skehan Street was a triple decker, with a for sale sign badly in need of some TLC. It had shaggy asphalt shingles and there was grass growing up from the cracks in the driveway. But even from that distance, you could tell this house had decent bones. It was a traditional bow front Victorian with two bedroom apartments on each of its three floors. Then in November, the for sale sign went away. On a warm January day, I was at the park across the street again and the asphalt shingles were a memory. I did a little research and found out that the house had sold for $542,500 over $100,000 over it’s modest $424,000 asking price. Admittedly, it’s in one of the coolest neighborhoods in Somerville. But it needed a lot of work and I thought this was supposed to be a buyer’s market!
Was the low asking price a real estate agent’s strategy, or did the seller just get lucky?
January 22, 2008
I figure that my first post should help my readers understand where I’m coming from – literally. Last winter marked two years of skimming the real estate ads on a couple of sites, and watching prices fall, and fall, and fall…until we could afford something utterly fantastic. We ended up in Ryal Side, a south Beverly neighborhood, after 2 months of house hunting. At one showing, I climbed a driveway in my Columbia Ice Dragon boots, and then pulled our agent and my girlfriend up the slick ice while holding onto a fencepost. It was worth it; it was hard, but we got an amazing deal – the seller was motivated, the market was stagnant, and we held most of the cards.
There are two groups of people in particular who should give Beverly and Salem a good, hard look.
The first are the folks who are clinging to their ridiculously expensive apartments in places like Arlington and Cambridge. The commuter rail puts you in North Station in 30 minutes from the Beverly Depot, and more trains run on that line than on any other in greater Boston. If you aren’t in a position to pay half a million dollars or more for a condo, and you want great restaurants, diverse neighborhoods, things to do, and space of your own, you need to see Salem and Beverly. The tax break will pay for your commute, and lower-end real estate in Cambridge, Arlington, and even Somerville and Jamaica Plain often…well…
The second group is people relocating to Mass. It’s beautiful on the North Shore, and convenient, and AFFORDABLE. You can be ½ hour from downtown Boston, and 10 minutes from the beach, with excellent Indian, Japanese, and Mexican food within walking distance. Urban Mass. can murder your budget quick, or drive you inland – and if you see my little slice of heaven, you won’t settle for that! One place we looked at was snatched up by a family from out of state who bought it sight unseen – I think the guy had a friend from high school check it out for him. Sounds nice, but I doubt there were any other 3 bedroom houses for $240k that were as cute as that one – not in a neighborhood that’s popping like historic Salem. I’ll let you know what’s going on down there later this week…now I’m curious.
January 22, 2008
Southwest Corridor Park, the unfortunately-named strip of green between the Back Bay and Mass Ave subway stops, offers South End and Back Bay residents three beautifully manicured acres to enjoy. Succinctly summing up the city’s historically casual attitude toward the South End, nobody ever bothered to give this half-mile strip of green a friendlier, more attractive name.
A Beacon Hill park of a couple thousand square feet surrounded by the most expensive residential real-estate in the city has its own regal name: Louisburg Square. Its residents include Senator John Kerry, CEO and author Jack Welch, and author Robin Cook; a bunch of folks who could never stand for a name like “Public Park 72,” but the lowly South End gets a walking path named after an abandoned 1960’s highway project. I’m not bitter; the South End gets my “Most Improved Neighborhood” award while The Hill remains exactly as it was two centuries ago.
Complaints aside, this emerald oasis contrasts nicely against the concrete, asphalt, and brick covering the rest of the South End. The condos at West Newton Street near the park sit less than a quarter-mile from the closest Green Line station, and it’s not much farther from the nearest Orange Line station. Two quick blocks to the north reside The Shops at the Prudential offering loads of shopping, and Copley Place sits across the street from The Pru, beckoning those with deeper pockets and more expensive tastes. A block to the south, Petit Robert Bistro delivers French culinary artistry, and, just a couple doors away, The Wine Emporium offers an award-winning selection of beer, wine, and spirits.
These condos also fall within walking distance of one of my favorite supermarkets, Shaw’s. Those unwilling to part with a decent parking spot in the South End will surely appreciate a nearby market.
211 W. Newton Street, #2
$519,000
Beds: 1/ Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 690
$/SQ.Ft.: $752
242 W. Newton Street, #2
$349,000
Beds: 1/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 590
$/SQ.FT.: $592
247 W. Newton Street
$524,000
Beds 2:/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.: 845
$/SQ.FT.: $620
Within shouting-distance is Rutland Square: possibly the only cul-de-sac of the inner-city
70 W. Rutland Square, #1
$1,099,000
Beds: 2/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 1700
$/SQ.FT.: $646
Photo source
January 22, 2008
If you’re like me (and most other street-walking plebeians), you tend to think real estate in the Back Bay is a touch…overvalued. And it looks like just this once, our tenuous grasp of economics isn’t the reason we think so. The current average price of a property listed in Back Bay is just a hair over one million dollars, but the average price of properties sold in the last three months is a mere $613,750.
Now, this does go apples-to-oranges a bit on size and location (I mean, really, who wants to live west of Exeter? How can you enjoy upscale luxury when your garden-level neighbor is a Berklee student jam band?), but regardless - that’s one heck of a gap. And recently, many property owners have been moving to close it.
223 Beacon St - 2 beds, 2.5 baths, $885,000. Ok, forget that garden-level crack I made earlier; the only Berklee students moving into this place will already have a record deal and a better place to rehearse. Located in quite possibly the quietest block of Back Bay, equidistant from the chaos of the common, and hurly-burly of Copley Square, this place has boasts easy access to the Charles River Esplanade, a gorgeously redesigned kitchen, and a $40,000 price cut. That makes for a bargain $607/square foot - a good enough to deal to make anyone forget they’re living in a basement.
15 Hereford St - 2 beds, 2 baths, $799,000 - Down an astounding $70,000 in only 33 days, I’m still trying to figure out what’s wrong with this place. I must have swung by a dozen times by now - no hobos nesting in the alcoves, no MIT frat houses shouldering in on the premises. Hynes T stop is practically in the back yard, and the only reliable bus connection in the city is even closer. Plus walking distance to the shops of Newbury and the bars of Boylston, all while being nested in a network of one-way streets that insulate you from both.
48 Comm Ave - 2 beds, 2.5 baths, $3,995,000 - And lest you think the Back Bay’s real estate value is sinking faster than some of its houses, I submit to you this palatial property, nested on the western edge of the Public Garden. It features J.P. Morgan-esq views of Commonwealth Ave, a full-floor penthouse, and staggering total of 2,196 square feet. And the total price reduction after 503 days on the market? Zero.
January 22, 2008
It’s been a rough winter… a lot of snow, cold temps, and we’re getting kind of tired of spending half an hour bundling up in scarves, hats, gloves, boots, sweaters, sweaters, and more sweaters, just to get out the door. Likewise, like our spirits, inventory in Brighton and Brookline is down. I counted only 161 listings in Brighton this week, and 307 for Brookline.
Not a whole lot to look at, but a few properties caught our eye:
78 Kilsyth Road, no.3, Brighton, MA, $385K, 1300 square feet , Brighton, MA — is almost Brookline but about $100,000 less than it would cost you for a 2 bed just one block over. Of course, it’s still Brighton.
158 Kelton Street, no. 3, $389,9K, 1020 square feet, Brighton — We want to check this one out for interior decorating tips. It’s a little pricey for the square footage for Brighton, and Kelton is not one of Brighton’s prettiest streets, but the unit itself looks like something we’d want to see.
227 SUMMIT AVE #104W, $599K, 1121 square feet, Brookline, MA — It’s only a one bedroom, but it’s a big one and has got a spectacular one-of-a-kind view of the city, a patio and a huge terrace.
134 FULLER ST #1, $669K, 1640 square feet. Brookline, MA — Okay, so it’s on the first floor, but it’s a HUGE 3 bed, has got a fireplace, and a marble bathroom.
1080 BEACON ST #3B, $595K, 1392 square feet, Brookline — This 3 bed is in a great location, and the building has charm up the WAZOO (hey is that a word?)
We’re almost curious enough to get off the couch, don a scarf and brave the cold.
