bostonbubble.com

Kaidran · Joined: 17 Mar 2010 Posts: 289

http://www.wbur.org/2010/04/01/depreciating-dream-iv

Kaidran · Joined: 17 Mar 2010 Posts: 289

Its about price regulated housing coops which are so rare as to be not worth thinking about. My gut says it is not a good idea (even if it was more than 0.0001% of the housing stock), I'm just not sure why. Still 180k to buy a house seems pretty attractive at the moment and with discipline to actually save you would be better off than buying at market price (350). Am I so preconditioned that I feel I need to give the bank their cut? They seem to be the only group that would lose under this. Am I missing something?

balor123 · Joined: 08 Mar 2008 Posts: 1204

We have a supply problem. Too few homes in good locations with access to good schools for the number of people who want to live here. With a free market high cost becomes the solution for deciding who gets to live here. With this system a lottery decides instead. Neither really addresses the underlying cause.

I think the best approach is for government to proactively plan for the growth needed by it's citizens and to use this plan to control home prices. If we had such a plan in Boston (Texas cities have them), then I imagine it would look like this:
* Build and move some roads. Rebuild the others up to modern standards
* Extend and reroute T access to better cover the area
* Replace low density expensive homes with higher density cheaper homes
* Relax and standardize zoning laws (eliminating grandfathering)
This would be a major shakeup and the New England culture would not tolerate it but it would take us a long way. There's lot of other American cities who have successfully coped with populations of our size while supporting the same level of population and business (Houston and Dallas for example).

The key is good city planning and eliminating barriers to implementing it.

Renting in Mass · Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:56 pm GMT Post subject:

Yeah, who cares about coops? They should have focused on the pros and cons of condos and townhouses, which are very common.

balor123 · Joined: 08 Mar 2008 Posts: 1204

The nice neighborhoods don't build 3br and 4br condos. Nor do they build townhouses. The only times that they do these things is when they are luxurious enough that they can cost as much as homes in that neighborhood. A nice house in Wellesley costs about $600k - $800k and a nice townhome in the same city? About $500k - $600k. Not much of a savings. In Weston townhomes run about $1mil and Lexington is similar. The cities are careful to make sure they don't accidentally approve competition that could depress home prices.