Housing prices in MA act like the recession never happened (Boston: for sale, apartment)

[Verseau]

Originally Posted by mdovell

That depends as what is the metro. Lawrence isn't that far from Boston and the rate is 15.5%

Workforce Development
New Bedford is at 12.2%
Fall river 12%
Brockton 9.3%
Providencetown 13.5%
Fitchburg 10.4%
Springfield 11%

The Boston-Cambridge-Quincy metro includes Lawrence and Brockton, but not the other cities. There are individual cities with exceptionally high unemployment rates, but the same holds true for the Chicago metro. Overall, though, it seems that Chicago has been hit harder by the recession.

[gf2020]

Guineas, I'm not sure I understand the point of your post. The recession has been over for 2 years and housing prices in the Northeast are on the rebound. That's a natural trend.

It may be interesting to compare the Greater Boston housing market to the Chicago area housing market, but you can never really make an apples to apples comparison between different geographic regions.

For what it's worth, I purchased my current home in Lynnfield in late 2005 and it is now worth about 10% less than what I paid for it. I'm not sure if or when the value will recover to its pre-2006 levels but prices in desirable communities are definitely on the rise.

[chaxey]

I'm not a realtor or expert, but I honestly think that the reason prices stay high is that there really is so little desirable housing available on the market.

As others have hinted, a lot of the housing in the Boston area is really crap. It's either postwar junk that was mass constructed that has little if any architectural value or modern conveniences/efficiencies/amenities, or it's prewar and badly maintained. New construction is salt box/modern colonial mcmansions on postage stamp lots. To me, neither of these 2 options are really all that appealing.

With land prices so high and availability of build-able lots so low, you're seeing more and more upper end communities undergoing the knock-down and rebuild scenarios.

The result of all this is prices for less desireable homes are being buoyed by the small availability of decent/desirable housing. While things were bad in the recession and still aren't great, boston wasn't hit nearly as hard as the rest of the country so people with anything decent are staying put.

I'd love to see statistics of dual income families in boston vs other communities as well. I wonder if that cultural aspect has a bit impact on things. IE, in Chicago, really a mid-western type place, is it more common culturaly for a woman to be a stay-at-home mom? This scenario is a rarity in this area for the most part, is that the case elsewhere in the country? I dont' know, I'm just inquiring/speculating.

[SuperSparkle928]

Originally Posted by gf2020

Guineas, I'm not sure I understand the point of your post. The recession has been over for 2 years and housing prices in the Northeast are on the rebound. That's a natural trend.

It may be interesting to compare the Greater Boston housing market to the Chicago area housing market, but you can never really make an apples to apples comparison between different geographic regions.

For what it's worth, I purchased my current home in Lynnfield in late 2005 and it is now worth about 10% less than what I paid for it. I'm not sure if or when the value will recover to its pre-2006 levels but prices in desirable communities are definitely on the rise.

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I agree with you gf2020;

Another data point (also, for what its worth). I purchased my last home in 1998 near the north shore, and sold it in 2009 for a 200% profit. Desirable communities are definitely on the rise, and from my observations, tend to be more immune to the economy than other areas.

[konfetka]

Originally Posted by Verseau

The Boston-Cambridge-Quincy metro includes Lawrence and Brockton, but not the other cities. There are individual cities with exceptionally high unemployment rates, but the same holds true for the Chicago metro. Overall, though, it seems that Chicago has been hit harder by the recession.

Lawrence and Brockton are 1. on the fringes of Greater Boston and 2. are less desirable, because of majority minority population and school performance, and 3. the house prices reflect that.


I, on the other hand, sold my house in 2005, and rented for a few years. I felt bad for the person who bought it, because it went down quite a bit, which I was expecting. I was surprised how clueless other people were, who didn't see it coming, while I was in a rush to sell before it went down, but I had an advantage, because I was in a financial industry.

[xo_kizzy_xo]

Originally Posted by chaxey

I'm not a realtor or expert, but I honestly think that the reason prices stay high is that there really is so little desirable housing available on the market.

This.

There was an episode of "House Hunters" last night where a metro Boston couple was looking to move out of their condo. Both born and bred in this area, from what I understood. Their house hunting was a drop-dead eye-opener, especially for the husband. He was aghast at tiny lots, houses with smaller square footage than the condo, and houses needing a lot of work. He mentioned it to the realtor, and the realtor, to the camera, said, "It's Boston. We have old housing stock. He's not going to get anything bigger unless they move out of this area."

They did decide on a cute house with the smallest square footage and needed the most remodeling, btw.

ETA: I have out-of-state friends who would LOVE to live in this area. Unfortunately I don't think any of them ever will because the prices of the available housing stock terrifies them. Can't say I blame them.

Most people don't want to get into that. I have relatives who moved out of this area, then returned. They were adamant about new construction. They eventually found it, but they had to pay over and above for it.

[mdovell]

Lawrence is only 26 miles from Boston..it is hardly on the "fringe".
Greater Boston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It all depends what you call a metro area.

Originally Posted by xo_kizzy_xo

This.

There was an episode of "House Hunters" last night where a metro Boston couple was looking to move out of their condo. Both born and bred in this area, from what I understood. Their house hunting was a drop-dead eye-opener, especially for the husband. He was aghast at tiny lots, houses with smaller square footage than the condo, and houses needing a lot of work. He mentioned it to the realtor, and the realtor, to the camera, said, "It's Boston. We have old housing stock. He's not going to get anything bigger unless they move out of this area."

They did decide on a cute house with the smallest square footage and needed the most remodeling, btw.

ETA: I have out-of-state friends who would LOVE to live in this area. Unfortunately I don't think any of them ever will because the prices of the available housing stock terrifies them. Can't say I blame them.

Most people don't want to get into that. I have relatives who moved out of this area, then returned. They were adamant about new construction. They eventually found it, but they had to pay over and above for it.

House Hunters like most other reality shows are staged.
The Truth About “House Hunters” on HGTV It was also mentioned on this very forum itself
//www.city-data.com/forum/real-...rs-staged.html

But it is true that the housing is old. Some of it just doesn't look good. Sometimes odd stuff shows up if you ride the T. On the redline I saw someone with a rooftop gym...no walls or ceiling..just some weights and bars, old political ads..there's one for Kerry '04 which made sense back then and I'm sure they were paid but there's no incentive to take it down.

"There aren't, by the way, plenty of jobs available to people without lots of specialized skills, but if you're in hi-tech and many other high-education, high-skill fields, there's no shortage of jobs."

Depends on what is high skill and high education and high tech. Much of government is unionized. Governmental unions cannot go on strike and many work without contract. Raises might only occur with union approval or if a new contract is ratified.

In a sense if everyone had a given skill then the value of it goes down. Also what used to be high tech no longer is (programming). What I am getting at is there's going to be significant numbers of people left behind. It is not as if unemployment is 2% (august 2000 levels). We've never really been a state that allowed housing projects to occur en masse like say..Phoenix. We also don't have an obsession with replacing things when they are still new. There's plenty of cracked sidewalks and curbs but people deal with them. In a sense there is a divide and this compounds with time. I'm not saying I side with those occupy groups but it would be misleading to assume that Boston runs or is all of of Mass and new england.

[Bruins_Fan]

I'm not sure most of America would agree that the recession is over, IMHO.

As for values, my home value in Swampscott has basically stayed the same since it tanked in '08 or so. No real increase or decrease. We were actually on the market in late '08 early '09, with a good out of state job offer, but decided to stay based on the garbage offers we were getting on the house.

[donewithpretty]

Originally Posted by chaxey

I'm not a realtor or expert, but I honestly think that the reason prices stay high is that there really is so little desirable housing available on the market.

Originally Posted by xo_kizzy_xo

This.

Thirded. My husband and I bought in 2008. We were looking in Arlington and Medford Hillside, and the house choices were crazy! Cute but postage size houses listed for $499 and went for $525 in Arlington. Houses with almost unusable floor plans held firm at $400k+. When we'd finally find a decent lot size and house, the owners would have built a four car garage on it for some reason.

Finally, we found the "perfect" house: level lot, 100 years old, plenty of parking, and just renovated. There were 8 bidders, and we had to go $35k over asking to get it. (It sold the first weekend on the market.) May sound crazy in light of the current market, but pickings were, and have been, slim.

As my husband says, the only thing worse than spending several hundred thousand on a house we love would have been spending that much on a house we couldn't stand.

[xo_kizzy_xo]

Originally Posted by mdovell

House Hunters like most other reality shows are staged.
The Truth About “House Hunters” on HGTV It was also mentioned on this very forum itself
//www.city-data.com/forum/real-...rs-staged.html

I know it is :nodding: For some reason, though, I thought that being from this area that particular couple should have already know what they were getting into :shrug:

But it is true that the housing is old. Some of it just doesn't look good. Sometimes odd stuff shows up if you ride the T. On the redline I saw someone with a rooftop gym...no walls or ceiling..just some weights and bars, old political ads..there's one for Kerry '04 which made sense back then and I'm sure they were paid but there's no incentive to take it down.

There's also the issue of not being able to update because of the cost. In my neighborhood, for every house that is currently or has been recently updated, there are probably 10 which haven't been touched in 20-30 odd years. I'm one of those 10. I can't afford it, and I'll no doubt pay the price when do I sell.