Ink block, etc (Harvard: sales, apartments, rentals)

[bigfatdude]

$4000 a month for the privilege of living in a small ikea-style apartment with shoebox-sized bedrooms, next to a noisy, sooty expressway, a homeless shelter and a train yard. Will this insanity ever end?

[wolfgang239]

But there's a Whole Foods and a coffee shop downstairs, totally worth it.

[495neighbor]

extra extra 471 residents swindled

[bostonguy1960]

Are you sure it's that price? I figured $3,500 plus. Free parking? I dooouuubt it.

Aren't the rentals and sales in those and the other ones finishing later moving well, according to media reports?

[goyguy]

Originally Posted by bigfatdude

$4000 a month for the privilege of living in a small ikea-style apartment with shoebox-sized bedrooms, next to a noisy, sooty expressway, a homeless shelter and a train yard. Will this insanity ever end?

I've got that beat. Last year a commercial block near Harvard Square was torn down in favor of a five-story cube of glass and steel. Its ground-level storefronts consist of an optician, a "lighting" shop, and a vacant space. No grocery shopping other than a convenience store is within easy walking distance, though of course all the attractions of the square are close at hand. The apartments' window walls look out on the four streets which converge below, with noisy vehicular and pedestrian traffic at most times of the day. $5600/month is the cheapest rent.

"What the market will bear" is the excuse that's always trotted out to justify these nutty rates. And the market is not home-grown or domestically based all that much. Speculators and students from the Eastern Hemisphere are playing a principal role in the inflation of sales and rental price tags. Every time a property becomes available there's a sizable number of South and East Asian people scoping it out. Some of them are even referred through agencies staffed with persons who literally speak their language that have cropped up of late. When you consider that countries such as China and Iran are supposedly political adversaries of the US it gets a trifle disconcerting.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by goyguy

And the market is not home-grown or domestically based all that much. Speculators and students from the Eastern Hemisphere are playing a principal role in the inflation of sales and rental price tags. Every time a property becomes available there's a sizable number of South and East Asian people scoping it out. Some of them are even referred through agencies staffed with persons who literally speak their language that have cropped up of late. When you consider that countries such as China and Iran are supposedly political adversaries of the US it gets a trifle disconcerting.

I don't see how this is an issue at all. If they have the money and they want to pay the price, good for them. No point in me being envious about it. The more people want to invest in our area because of what we have, the better. Even if it means it prices me out (which it has).

And oh no, people speak other people's languages!

[Shrewsburried]

Originally Posted by timberline742

And oh no, people speak other people's languages!

Time to deport all those jingoistic baby-boomers drinking at their local Portuguese, Polish, Irish, German, etc. clubs.

[Cliff Clavin]

Originally Posted by bigfatdude

$4000 a month for the privilege of living in a small ikea-style apartment with shoebox-sized bedrooms, next to a noisy, sooty expressway, a homeless shelter and a train yard. Will this insanity ever end?

Studios start at $2,600. Reasonable IMO.

https://www.on-site.com/web/online_a...id=0&required=

[bigfatdude]

Originally Posted by Cliff Clavin

Studios start at $2,600. Reasonable IMO.

https://www.on-site.com/web/online_a...id=0&required=

I don't know about that - needing to make over $100k/year just to be able to afford a tiny studio in a location that's nowhere near ideal doesn't sound reasonable to me.

[timberline742]

If it isn't reasonable they won't rent and prices will drop.