bostonbubble.com

[john p]

Boston's housing market seems to have been affected by the pendulum shift from government intervention to that of Laissez-faire.

Balancing democracy with capitalism has always been a challenge. With too much democracy and you get socialism. With too much capitalism you get an aristocracy. People game the system on both ends of the spectrum from those double dipping in "entitlements" to the pharmaceutical and oil companies writing our government policies.

What kills the middle of the road folks is the dramatic shift between one extreme to the other or from just general incompetence no matter where the pendulum is? Because we had so much government intervention prior to the Weld Administration with respect to housing, investors weren't very interested in developing units. Further after the wake of the late 80's housing crash here, and the quick growth of the equities markets, real estate was not an attractive investment. The alternative of the stock market was too attractive. Once, the stock market tanked, many needed to park their money in a more stable investment. Because we had failed to produce adequate housing all along, and with the growth of universities lacking dormitories in the City, we had a very big problem here. Kudos to the past administrations for letting the Big Dig runs up as well. So what was the game plan going on here, "create a hardship or rip out the crutch and then let your cronies’ cash in on it and kick the rest of us on the head while we're down?" What was our policy in both extremes, "reward failure?” In a socialistic approach, we give our weakest performing school systems more money, and in the laissez-faire approach it seemed that we gave our weakest performing contractors more money in the Big Dig and now in Iraq.

Has anyone seen the new proposed fee increases to the MBTA and commuter rail? Why can they get away with this? The answer is that under the Laissez-faire approach, consumers need to pay whatever the "market can bear". If the alternative to the commuter rail is driving, and gas prices go up, the commuter rail has an opportunity to hike prices. If the commuter rail hikes prices, hey, the parking lots in Boston hike theirs. It's kind of like how the cost of a prescription drug is greater in Massachusetts than in Canada because the pharmaceutical companies feel that they can squeeze us. What if they made all the tolls $5? What's the end game here? My favorite was one night I got charged $3 at the Airport and because of the tunnel problems, I had to get off the South Boston exit. I had to pay the toll and the road wasn't even open.

I'm in no way saying that we need to become a socialistic nation. I work way too hard to want that. We just can't let the foxes guard the hen houses. Our politicians are like the dumb security guards that open the doors for the burglars. We need to start pooling our strength in numbers and use democracy to temper capitalism when it overheats, and stop electing dumb bubbas.

This pendulum of government intervention and Laissez-faire has a wrecking ball on the bottom of it. What on earth is the State Legislature thinking, to first create hardships for us and then to just let us get completely kicked in the head with health care costs, transportation costs, housing costs, education costs, etc. Are the politicians also seeing how much stupidity and incompetence we are willing to bear as well?

News flash for politicians: One of the organizing principles for a democracy is for collective bargaining power. When we built and paid for infrastructure we added to the common wealth. It is an asset given from the blood, sweat, and tears of one generation to the other. When we hand it to a private entity and that private entity gouges us because we can "bear it", we are morons. Another organizing principle for democracy was to evenly spread out the sacrifices that our society needed to absorb. Now, the rich get tax breaks, DURING WARTIME!!!, while the middle and bottom lose their lives in the Wars, and get pummeled on almost every economic front. We are in an environment where very large institutions and industries strive to do two things, first limit their competition and our options, and then are test to see how much crap we will bear.

Does anyone else who is trying to buy a property feel the same way? With interest rates shooting up, commuter rail/MBTA costs, health care costs, gas prices, etc. We’re getting killed by all these greedy bastards. Am I missing something? I say when you spend a dollar on something, you are casting a vote. If you overpay for something you reward someone's elses greed and you put yourself and several others in the same hole.

[john p]

A recent example of how out of hand things are. I found a house that was asking in the mid $700's. Its "assesed" value was $441k. That's right $300k above its assessed value. I offered this FSBO $450k and got "You wasted my time, my wifes time..." blah, blahh blah. What was the town assessor incompetent or corrupt? I wonder if there are any legal eagles out there who know if this new crop of buyers will have to shoulder a greater tax burden that of existing owners with lower tax assessments.