bostonbubble.com

[Guest]

The 36 Sandrick Road, $595K, MLS#70683763 was priced 100k less than the accessed value and looks in good condition.

34 Birch Hill Road, $439K, MLS#70720839 was priced half of the accessed value.

But most homes in Belmont are listed higher or close to their tax values and those two are really outliers. I guess the market would move if all the sellers priced their houses like them.

[melonleftcoast]

"I guess the market would move if all the sellers priced their houses like them."

Amen!

[john p]

http://www.realtor.com/search/searchresults.aspx?ctid=25532&mnp=31&mxp=31&typ=7

http://www.realtor.com/search/searchresults.aspx?ctid=59322&mnp=31&mxp=31&typ=7

http://maps.live.com/ ...truncated...

Zoom in a bit to see the detail - cranberry bogs, lakes, farms, forrest. You'll see the commuter rail comes right into town. This just came in in the past 10 years so it is totally up and coming and hasn't been on the yuppie's radar. Anything above $300k that said "As is" would make me nervous no matter where it was. Plympton is an awesome town as well. Hanover is great and worth a look.

If you're talking Acton, I'd look at the south shore near the commuter rail. I'm not sure that some school systems can sustain their spending growth and yield the scores over the long term. Sure, if you can get into a really rich town, more money is available to pay for it, but I think that property taxes in some communities are going to grow at a much faster rate than others in the next five years so keep your eye on that...

Here's another source of buyers that might enter Massachusetts, folks from New York and New Jersey. The people in these States are getting absolutely killed with property taxes. It is obscene what they are paying and I wouldn't be surprised to see many wanting to relocate to D.C., Virginia, or even Massachusetts. I'd be interested to see if we get a bump in some relocations this year. As bad as it is here, it might be worse for some of our neighbors...

Editor's Note: This post was edited to abbreviate a URL which was widening the page due to the way that the forum software lays out posts. No other changes have been made, and the URL still points to the original destination - only its display has been shortened.

[melonleftcoast]

john p.:

Thanks for the suggestions on towns. i have worked a bit on the southshore, mostly in Kingston, but I'm not all that familiar with the communities down that way. a quick search of the Silver Lake Regional High School, which i believe services Halifax and Plympton (?), shows that test scores are not so good. which defeats one of the main reasons for us to move back to the Boston area.

My husband and i have had this debate about living in a town with not so good public schools and sending the kids to private schools. honestly, if we had just had one child, we probably would have done that, but with two kids, the cost of private schooling is too expensive. but if we had decided to only have one child, we would have been able to afford to stay here on the SF Peninsula.

As for Acton, and several other towns i'm looking at, they DO have very high property tax rates. i about fell off my chair when I first noticed that.

I can see your point about people moving to Boston from NY, NJ and CT, as I know a few people that have moved here from those locales already. However, I know more people that used to live in Boston that are from CT and NY that have moved back to be closer to their families, or moved for better job opportunities in NY/NJ metro area. Do you know many people that have moved here from CT, NY & NJ, or the other way around?

:)mel

[john p]

The regional school district is called the Silver Lake Regional High.

Pembroke broke away from this regional district due to their own growth. The new Silver Lake High School serves Plympton, Kingston and Halifax.

What you have to keep in mind is that many areas that are now excellent school districts weren't in the past. Take Hopkinton, it was not always an executive bedroom community and the time to get in there was in the mid 80's.

The new commuter rail will change this region over time. I thought it made sense to invest in an emerging market than to buy in a tired, overpriced mature market. I'd rather my kids grow up in an up and coming place while still being able to enjoy nature and acquire a small town sense of community (it takes a village to raise a child kind of stuff..). So many in this website talk about wanting the world class employment but also the cheaper cost of living. This slice of the State, now with the commuter rail and being not too far from the ocean offers a great value RELATIVE to the other areas of the State, in my opinion.

Part of it is, also, that the "Me" Generation might dial back their commitment to education once their kids are though the system. I mean Newton used to be the number one school system and it seems now that people are trying to reel in the spending; I wonder how that might affect school's operating budgets...

[melonleftcoast]

Update

Search Parameters: SFH, 1500+sq ft, 3+bd 1+ba, <$650K)
Communities: Acton (added back in), Belmont, Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, Sudbury, Wayland, Wellesley, Weston
Potential Community to add in the future: Needham(?)

There have been a lot fewer of my saved houses go under agreement in the past couple weeks (first two weeks of March), even though I continue to add new listings to my saved properties. Houses have continued to have their asking prices lowered, or be pulled off the market. Just in the past few days, there have been several new listings added, as opposed to the trickle of new listings in the past couple of months.

As far as I can tell, none of the saved properties that went UA in late Feb. have closed yet, so the following is pure speculation:

Could the "surge" of my saved properties have been because:
1)Buyers had low rates from early Feb. locked in, and had to either buy a property, or lose their low rate.
2)Sellers decided to negotiate and accept a lower asking price, aided by the possibility that a disproportionate number of my saved properties had a lot of equity and the sellers could negotiate more (as opposed to writing a check at closing or getting bank approval for a short sale).

Now I wonder if buyers are taking a breather as they wait for more properties to come on the market, as they watch mortgage rates drop (again) and the spread between 30 yr fixed conforming loans widens compared to 30 yr fixed jumbo loans. I imagine the Fed's move on Friday could make serious home buyers hesitate, and at least keep the fence sitters on the fence.

Time will tell...

[Hard Rain]

Mel,

Thanks for the update, I also have noticed a marked increase in listings with little in the way of sales.

In Newton for example:

13 sales in March - 40 new listings.

Of those 13 sales, four were resales of homes bought within the last eight years. Three of the four sellers suffered significant losses;

5 bonwood: $65,000 or 11% loss since 2007

24 williams: $80,000 or 19% loss since 2005

1093 chestnut: $76,000 or 14% loss since 2003

28 woodbine: $32,000 or 8% gain since 2002

[sean]

There will be no bounce until the recession is over. If you are really a buyer, don't worry.

[melonleftcoast]

Thanks for the info Hard Rain.

[Hard Rain]

Hi Folks,

We have another sale in bubble proof Newton:

9 FAIR OAKS AVE sold for $570,000 on 3/18/2008

Last sold for $760,000 on 4/20/2007. Lehman bros. financed all but one thousand dollars of the purchase with a $609,000 interest only loan and a $150,000 piggyback. $190,000 loss in less than a year.....

[JCK]

[JCK]

Hard Rain,

There's something else fishy going on with that property. The 2007 "buyer" was involved in several deed transactions in 2003 with the 2007 "seller."

So I suspect this wasn't an arm's length transaction.

[Hard Rain]

JCK,

Did you happen to notice the seller had been foreclosed on four times prior to getting the last mortgage? fishy indeed....