bostonbubble.com

[deng]

I have thinking about moving to Boston. Any idea what is the situation in Beacon Hill and Back Bay ? Still a bubble area or have prices declined already? How about typical property taxes in Boston for a 2 BR apartment?

[admin]

This is largely anecdotal, but I've been keeping an eye on a building that I used to live in which was in the Back Bay very close to the border with Beacon Hill. It was converted into condos after I left. I was baffled to see the asking price for the unit I had lived in, knowing what I had paid in rent and knowing that the price didn't appear to bear any reasonable relationship to an equivalent rental. I believe that unit has been sold. There are, however, three units in the building which still haven't sold and I believe they have been up for sale for a very long time now without any price drops that I remember. It was a nice building when I lived there, and my guess is that these units are not selling because people are finally paying attention to price again. In my opinion, there needs to be a very substantial adjustment in market psychology before sellers are willing to make the deep discounts necessary to bring the market back in line with historical norms, and this seller (at least from what I can remember) isn't even making the token 1 - 5% discount that the media here likes to write about and blow out of proportion. However, I don't know how typical this is of other sellers in the area as I've only been watching that one building. My guess is that renting is still a better deal there.

- admin