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Old 05-26-2011, 06:07 PM
 
46 posts, read 53,436 times
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I'll be working in downtown Boston come September and I'm looking to buy a multifamily around the same time. What areas should I completely avoid? Which should I research more? The area can be anywhere North, South, East (err), West of Boston that's within a 30-45 min commute to downtown via rail or bus. I don't mind driving to a T station in the morning and then taking the rail, but everything combined must be under 45 mins.
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Old 05-26-2011, 06:21 PM
 
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Default multi-family

What kind of budget & are you looking to live there or have it strictly as an investment property?
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Old 05-26-2011, 06:28 PM
 
46 posts, read 53,436 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kmann-sherborn View Post
What kind of budget & are you looking to live there or have it strictly as an investment property?
I'd like to stay around $300k for a triplex, where I'd occupy one of the units. Some rehab wouldn't be a problem if it made sense. (Mostly looking at triplexes or duplexes with triplex potential)
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Old 05-26-2011, 07:02 PM
 
Location: no longer new england
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Malden has some nice cheap duplexes, and is really convenient with access to the T but, I don't know if you have kids, cause some of the schools aren't very nice. There's a lot of stuff to do there and some nice communities. Could you be a little more specific about what type of place you want to live in?
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Old 05-27-2011, 10:02 AM
 
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Originally Posted by Bostonmania View Post
Malden has some nice cheap duplexes, and is really convenient with access to the T but, I don't know if you have kids, cause some of the schools aren't very nice. There's a lot of stuff to do there and some nice communities. Could you be a little more specific about what type of place you want to live in?
No kids, I recently just graduated college. I'm not exactly sure what type of area I want but off the top of my head safety and "rentability" come to mind. I plan on staying in this house for 3-5 years.

It would be nice to go for a run/walk in more of a residential area but the city isn't out of the question either.
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Old 05-27-2011, 11:15 AM
 
Location: no longer new england
332 posts, read 1,018,070 times
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Well Malden has residential and cityish parts of it. It's pretty safe and very rentable, and the section that I'm familiar and stay in has lots of duplexes in a residential type of area which is a nice area to jog or hang out.
Malden's classified as kind of a suburban city because it has a city center with the T station and businesses and restaurants, and then there are some nice residential areas with lots of Duplexes. If you want, you can go to google maps and type in spring st, malden ma. go to street view and you can see what that residential area is like. That's the main residential area there I'm familiar with. It's safe and pretty rentable. It's a pretty nice community too.
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Old 05-27-2011, 02:28 PM
 
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Malden looks nice from what I can see online. Maybe I'll take my bike out through there one weekend! What do you think the morning commute would be via rail to downtown?

How about Everett? Saugus? Revere? Anything south of Boston?
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Old 05-27-2011, 03:06 PM
 
Location: no longer new england
332 posts, read 1,018,070 times
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From the place I was talking about probably 20-30 minutes to get downtown via the orange line. Trains run really frequent during that time which makes it a nice commute. Everett is physically closer to boston, but doesn't have as good public transit and probably pricier. I'm not really familiar with nice places to live there. Revere could also be a good option, it's on the ocean and you can take the blue line into boston, but I wouldn't find it as convenient as Malden. I'm not really familiar with it. As far as south of Boston, you might want to check out Braintree, which has a long commute, but it's a nice place. It will be a lot pricier probably though. The suburbs south of Boston in my experience are more expensive than other places.
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Old 05-28-2011, 08:16 AM
 
Location: North of Boston
3,686 posts, read 7,423,982 times
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$300K will get you a decent multi in East Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, maybe Quincy. Those locations will keep you under 45 minutes. Lynn and Peabody have good values but they are just a bit further north.
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Old 05-28-2011, 08:25 AM
 
Location: The Triad
34,088 posts, read 82,929,741 times
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Do a Venn diagram.
Circle around where you work and a circle around where you'll want your (future) home to be.

Independent of the financial considerations are the actual PITA being a LL issues:
Ideally your investment property should be in the overlap on that diagram...
but it should not EVER be more than 1hr (in daytime traffic) beyond your (future) home.

hth
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