bostonbubble.com

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[quote="Anonymous"]the thing that is interesting to me is how uniform the expectations are. With current status quo why should anyone not get their asking price? some of these houses (even though a small %) are still selling. Is this due to the uneducated buyer or because people just need to buy something?

What will be the catalyst to make the market actually come in line with realities (price to rent, income to mortgage, etc)?

quote]

I think I can give this one a fair shot at answering. My wife and I just bought a home and I would not consider myself an uneducated buyer. We made offers on three properties. The first two didn't want to budge on price much. With concessions we were taking about 5-10% off with our intitial offer. Before we made offers I looked at the mass land records site to see when they bought the house and how much they mortgaged. For a majority of the houses we looked the people who were selling are pretty much stuck. They can't budge on price however they are not in dire straits (yet at least). Anything decent in the 300-350 range will go pretty quickly usually within in two weeks. I am talking starter homes with at least 3 beds and 1 to 1.5 baths outside of 128. There will also be a lot of junk in that range too but those houses have been on the market since I started looking since the middle of last year. The people we bought from had relocated and had bought the house in 2005 with 40k down. He ended up having to bring 20k to closing. I think the house was a good deal because the guy needed to sell and priced accordingly. But in those type of situations you have to be able to move quick.

[datzla]

[showgunx]

Back in Oct. 23th, I reply saying there is not enough fear to drive down Boston housing market yet, because as financial section is suffering, higher education and healthcare industries are holding the local economy.
Man, what a change in just 2 short months.
Most local colleges' income are decreasing, due to lack of student(tution), negative investment return, decrease of donation, and decrease of government support. School business is finally in ression.
For healthcare industry, I hear the news this morning, lack of state funding is forcing hospital to cut cost. I think soon we might see layoff from hospitals too.
I don't see any other sector in Boston economy that is still doing well currently, this is a clear signal the true "winter" is finally start to come to Boston economy.
This is just the beginning, the worst is yet to come. The falling price of crapy towns mean jacksh*t, the true bottom indicator should be when the housing price of nice towns like Newton, Belmont fall 20%. Until then, I will keep my head down and keep saving.

[Guest]

[balor123]

The idea was to get them to provide most of the information needed to determine if they could afford the house they bought and then ask them: why did you buy this house?!?

[nickbp]

[ConcernedCitizen2]

I like Malden because it has a good subway line and is pretty safe. It has no "brand" though like the Immune Towns, is perceived to be dumpy probably and my guess is that the schools are bad.

On the other hand, maybe it's a better risk adjusted approach to buy an affordable home in Malden and take a punt that the town improves, catching the value increase that Somerville receives from being next to Cambridge.

With Immune Towns, all the value is priced in. You are buying a perfect school system that could go down. Maybe kind of like Milken's idea on junk bonds vs AAA bond: if you have "skill" on picking the right names, you can benefit from uplift with junk bonds whereas with AAA bonds there's usually only one way the ratings head: down.

I from time to time keep an eye on a couple of variables that would tell me if Malden will become Somerville: cool independent restaurants and cafes, artist studios, young fashion designer types, etc.

Malden in my view has the right starter ingredients to become more artistic: industrial spaces, old garages. It seems to be lacking a catalyst though. These movements usually happen during the boom times as the expensive areas push the artists, students and other bohemians over to neighboring towns. So this will be delayed for a few years.

I grew up in Jamaica Plain in the 1980s and my parents were early adopters in a similar way there. The problem: they got divorced and we had to rush sell a beautiful, huge, Victorian home for a song. The house on zillow got up to $600-700k in the boom times. I haven't checked the value lately.

I think Roslindale has a better chance of becoming the next JP before Malden becomes the next Somerville. The seeds are already there in Roslindale. Google independent restaurants, cafes, artists groups in Roslindale and I think you'll see what I mean. I haven't checked it in a while though.

I lived in NYC in the late 1990s and was similarly too early in an area called Greenpoint, which borders Willamsburg. Williamsburg then was becoming the new East Village which got too expensive. Williamsburg is now much more expensive so people there saw a lot of uplift.

Here in London UK I live in the East End which has the profiles of the above listed areas but I think I may be too early again as it's also a bit rough. Lots of great independent restaurants, artists, young people with multi colored hair, but also as i've discovered, a crack delivery service operating out of a pizza delivery company. At least you don't have that in Malden as far as I know! And flats in my area are GBP 250,000 for a 1 bed. Terrible value for crack ratio !

[Guest]

More about Malden:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/city-of-malden-malden

http://www.wickedlocal.com/malden/archive/x1272966998/Lofty-plans-Artist-studio-homes-hit-the-market-in-Malden