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That's what they said in every gateway city across New England.
Fight what. 40B has been the law for generations. The property owners can't get revenue without tenants. Some signed leases and they are on the hook for them even if they don't attend class. That's why some are already subletting their units.
History has shown this to be true time and time again. Reliance on a given industry that falls leads to higher unemployment and then lower rents and property values and who then moves in. How many more announcements of the closing of bars, stores and restaurants will it take to convince you? Regardless of who wins the white house the immigration policy isn't going to really change until the developing world gets the vaccine.
If academia doesn't allow online education that means those in those countries are stuck back home and cannot attend even online.That's really bad PR. Heck Mbas have moved mostly online.
Crappy remote learning? Ivy league has been promoting it for decades. MIT courseware was one of the first.
Also keep in mind many communities don't want students back if they spread it. There are many areas that can't deal with covid clogging the ERs and ICUs.
Remember since late July buildings could be half occupied in Boston but it's only 5%. If companies don't want you break why should academia?
There wasn’t an exodus of the professional class from Boston the way there was in NYC and SF. I bought in Boston during the shutdown and the place I bought was on the market less than a week. I sold in Boston during last month in under two weeks, for a much less desirable unit than I bought. Stuff is still moving swiftly which says there’s still healthy demand, 6 months in. That’s demand that wants to live in Boston even if they’re working from home or not working at all (a la retirees). That’s not a market that’s going to drop prices 40%.
There’s more professional class who wants to move in if they can afford to. These aren’t the people who are going to rent in dorms or buy in massive complexes. In a worst-case scenario where they become low-income, all it does is widen the gap where Boston has low income and high income housing with nothing in between. It’s that gap that’s really where the trouble is, and this option doesn’t solve it.
The mere idea that this is a chance to solve a housing shortage speaks that there’s still a lot of demand to live in Boston. The rain clouds over closed offices and schools is really a distraction in hopes that prices do crater. If there’s no demand anymore there’s no reason to convert dorms, and if there is demand then a lot of that demand doesn’t want a former dorm if they’re already in something better than a dorm in the burbs.
I think there’s a bit of a fantasy/hope that this will create a dip for those groups to get a second chance and getting in and riding a second wave of gentrification to the bank, sort of like how some investors did in March and April. I just don’t see it happening. I DO see a leveling out of prices, which by itself is a cooling compared to the 5-10% YoY growth Boston had been seeing. That’s not going to do anything for the family making $100k who wants a shot at a roomy condo near downtown though.
Right but what if the city of Boston gets rid of residency. That's 30,000 employees which if are part of a family of four 120,000.
Six months means we're hardly a third in. The lack of international students is huge. Without international immigration mass would have lost population since the early 90s. They're nothing the state can do work federal issues. Land lords still need to get paid. At what point do major companies start saying not to come back until July? Gas prices haven't gone up and traffic is still moving.
Sf is argued to be what it was in the 60s and 70s now. If you can work from home you really have little reason to go in. If wfh was so bad we'd see it reflected in corporate statements like 10ks... But we don't. I have stock in blue chips and voted for three proxies and none of them brought up going back. It probably won't on the conference call as well. If you can't work from home you might not make as much. It isn't that hard to live in say Worcester or Providence and bank the difference as you can still work for a company in Boston. In NYC theres a fair amount that went to the Hamptons or Fairfield country. Boston isn't that different.
There wasn’t an exodus of the professional class from Boston the way there was in NYC and SF. I bought in Boston during the shutdown and the place I bought was on the market less than a week. I sold in Boston during last month in under two weeks, for a much less desirable unit than I bought. Stuff is still moving swiftly which says there’s still healthy demand, 6 months in. That’s demand that wants to live in Boston even if they’re working from home or not working at all (a la retirees). That’s not a market that’s going to drop prices 40%.
Disagree, it's more about people here assuming (IMO correctly) that WFH won't last. The people who left NYC will go back once the pandemic ends.
Disagree, it's more about people here assuming (IMO correctly) that WFH won't last. The people who left NYC will go back once the pandemic ends.
Halfish...
My main point is that Boston relies much more on academia than other cities. I'm not trying to put down SF or LA or NYC but Academia is easily one of the top three industries of Boston if not the first. This isn't some niche market on a dusty historical commission book.
From what I have been reading about NYC is that it's mostly tourists and students that left. There's still millions of people that live in NYC. So doing the same thing to Boston has much more of an impact because frankly it is more dependent on academia for its economy.
Without immigrants Bostons population would be where it was in the 1980s. I'm not going to go into by neighborhood here but clearly it is also dependent on immigration https://www.bostonindicators.org/art...n-foreign-born
Students travel and many of them aren't coming back because of the virus and borders being closed. https://www.masslive.com/living/2020...able-life.html
"A scholarship funded by the late Margaret “Peg” Downing, the first lay principal of the now closed St. Joseph Central High School in Pittsfield, is sending 21-year-old Haitian Brely villager My-Meeclean “Mimi” Jean to nursing school this fall in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital about 58 miles away. She had been offered a full scholarship to the School of Nursing at Elms College in Chicopee, but travel restrictions around the pandemic led to the decision to study in country"
I'm just using this as one example. The clock is ticking. If this goes into years then what. She didn't give up on education, she isn't taking a gap year. Do you actually think tens of millions of immigrants are going to take "gap" years or simply stay local? The only way universities can get around the virus and the border is to have online classes. Period. Student visas are limited.
If the students cannot come back in January then what? Next June? 2022? Companies want these students to work for them and can simply take the middle man out and start their own training programs. We've already seen this with major tech companies.
We can't have empty buildings all over Boston regardless of reason. Academia cannot force students to break laws to get to class. So the recourse is online classes.Again this hits Boston harder than other cities.
So we need to work in the office now because....because of productivity? Yeah about that.
https://www.wired.com/story/eight-ho...kday-is-a-lie/
"Even during an unusually jam-packed week for me, I didn’t work 40 hours. I never worked eight hours in single day, though I got close a few times, clocking over seven hours on three days. Still, this was more than I usually worked. For comparison, during a typical week in October with no big deadlines, I worked 27 hours and 11 minutes, with 82 percent average productivity. Usually, RescueTime records me doing between 20 and 30 hours of computer work per week. (Admittedly not all my work takes place in front of a computer, but enough of it does for this to be a helpful metric.)
I would feel worse about this if a wave of people in a Slack writers' group I’m in hadn’t recently shared their work hours. It turned out that no one was regularly working eight-hour days. Everybody was more in the five- to six-hour range. And until we shared that with each other, everybody was secretly feeling guilty and lazy about it."
So obviously if you are trying to look at productivity you have to keep in mind we didn't really need 40 hours to begin with.
From what I have been reading about NYC is that it's mostly tourists and students that left.
To me, it sounds like a lot more than just tourists and students. Now how widespread, I couldn't tell you.
You certainly have plenty extra incentive to leave NYC in a situation like this because of the taxes and the potential for crime getting out of control. But they will go back once forced into the office and realize how bad the commute would be.
Would those New Yorkers who bought on the Cape be considered MA residents (and pay MA taxes instead of NYC's) given that they would have lived in MA longer than in NY this year?
Disagree, it's more about people here assuming (IMO correctly) that WFH won't last. The people who left NYC will go back once the pandemic ends.
My office is in Burlington, though I usually work from home. I live in Boston by choice, and many in my social circle who live in Boston/Cambridge also live here by choice. Boston is a unique place to live and that's worth a premium.
The idea I challenge is that everyone packing into condos in the city are only doing so because they hate the commute and want to live near their work. My experience has been that many of my neighbors and friends are spending the money they are to be in the city because they like living in the city. There's people trying to move into Boston every day despite not working downtown or being able to work from home.
There's people on my block who can sell right now and have 3x as much home with 2 acres in an "elite" suburb but aren't because they'd rather live in the city. As long as these people continue to exist in numbers, there's only so much the real estate market will give.
My office is in Burlington, though I usually work from home. I live in Boston by choice, and many in my social circle who live in Boston/Cambridge also live here by choice. Boston is a unique place to live and that's worth a premium.
The idea I challenge is that everyone packing into condos in the city are only doing so because they hate the commute and want to live near their work. My experience has been that many of my neighbors and friends are spending the money they are to be in the city because they like living in the city. There's people trying to move into Boston every day despite not working downtown or being able to work from home.
There's people on my block who can sell right now and have 3x as much home with 2 acres in an "elite" suburb but aren't because they'd rather live in the city. As long as these people continue to exist in numbers, there's only so much the real estate market will give.
It will take a decade+ to see whether the 'urbanization' trend is sustainable. There's a massive demographic shift pending which, if it at all reflects the demographic shifts of the '50s-'60s, could see reduced demand for urban environments.
With birth rates down and cities having cleaned up significantly, I'm doubtful we'll see verbatim repeat of the Boomer migration to the 'burbs ... question is whether Boston demand can sustain through the population hole that is a declining <15yr cohort + Boomer die off. Obviously, regional immigration and job concentration could easily offset a reduction in national demand. I wouldn't advise anyone 'invest' in VT real estate given current and future trends, but eastern MA may slip through this demand "hole" without much drama.
I also don't see a swift end to the Fed's current rate predicament, which will continue to inflate assets as whole.
There's people trying to move into Boston every day despite not working downtown or being able to work from home.
That I doubt. It is mostly about the commute, but you also have to add the ability to live without a car. Somerville's probably the biggest example of this, there's plenty of 20-30 somethings in Somerville who can't afford a car but with enough roomates can (barely) afford rent. But even that group is here because their job is.
That I doubt. It is mostly about the commute, but you also have to add the ability to live without a car. Somerville's probably the biggest example of this, there's plenty of 20-30 somethings in Somerville who can't afford a car but with enough roomates can (barely) afford rent. But even that group is here because their job is.
Can't live in Burlington without a car.
You've also got scores of tech and finance bros buying their bachelor pad studio/1 bedrooms, VPs and partners in 3-bedroom and SFH brownstones, and empty nesters downsizing their Wellesley and Newton homes for a comfortable condo in the city. Most of these groups have at least one car, if not multiple.
Some even have multiple homes, and they'll just go shelter on the Cape or the Hamptons then come back when the coast is clear. They're not going to sell their Beacon Hill or Back Bay condo at a discount just because they can work from home.
Now, if we're talking places like JP and Dorchester...ok, that might be a bit more at-risk here. Inner Boston is going to be pretty resilient, though.
They're not going to sell their Beacon Hill or Back Bay condo at a discount just because they can work from home.
They will if their job leaves (with or without them). See, it's all inter connected. You need the college students, and they need to be here, to keep employers interested in staying. Have to think a lot of the foreign immigration is because employers brought them here to work in the office and to work with the college students. If employers could get away with it, they would stick them in some flyover part of the country where it's a couple dollars a sqft for decent office space... or maybe just leave them in the country they are from. They wouldn't bring them here.
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