3 Bedroom Houses in Watertown for Under $500,000

[sawyer2]

Originally Posted by Japanfan1986

I thought these were long gone, but I came upon this today: https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-18971?view=qv

The house is currently in the process of being sold. Just by the look of the outside and the whopping two (yes TWO) photos they show of the interior it obviously needs a lot of work.

Still, to get a house in Watertown for that price. It might be worth it.

How often do these pop up and are they ever in better shape than this one? If you up your budget by 100K you certainly have more options, but still.

If a developer buys it I would bet that it will be a quick flip - spend 50-100K or so for new kitchen and bath, paint, refinish floors etc and put it back on the market in the low-mid 700s.

The comps in this area don't warrant a full teardown rebuild, at least not yet.

The listing is already under agreement so we will see.

[495neighbor]

Originally Posted by BosYuppie

The "Revere-like" section you mention is pretty nice actually, it's a lot of post-war single families/ranch homes. There really aren't a lot of neighborhoods like that at all in 128. Really it's probably just a couple square miles of watertown that look like that. I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily that there is diverse housing stock in town. I agree that that section isn't worth anywhere near a million for a house though. Newton is just across the river and you can get a pretty nice single family in the nicer part of Nonantum or the fringes of West Newton for that money.

I think Watertown has breakout potential in 5-10 years as boomers (the ones who chopped all the trees there) hopefully cede their homes to younger families, and as the massive influx of new apartments start to actually fill up with some singles with disposable income (I believe a lot of the ones that are constructed are under-occupied). Traffic will only get worse though. There is a bike right-of-way that really should get turned into a trolley to Alewife.

I think some sections of Mount Auburn Street are pretty attractive. Most of the areas north and west of Mount Auburn are not too bad. The area close to the Charles River has some pretty homes too. I think one advantage Watertown has over Waltham is less traffic. There's still a lot of traffic on the main roads, but at least it isn't on top of 128 and dozens of office parks. The more rundown parts of Watertown are much quieter and safer in feel, less rundown than some of the neighborhoods abbuting North Newton in Waltham.