Apparently, the bubble’s deflating, but that still doesn’t stop the Globe from calling marshy, strip-mall repository Seekonk, MA, a picturesque bedroom community.
Lots of discussion at Blue Mass Group on the subject of building more housing, after a Rappaport Institute report called for the drastic need of increased supply to improve the economy and stablize the […]
Real estate blogger John takes a look at the latest wage numbers and concludes that Boston’s housing is expensive “[b]ecause people make a lot of money, and are willing to spend a lot of money.”
True enough, and I think - and have written as much - that critics of the high prices tend to overlook […]
John Keith does a great job debunking the notion that housing costs are the primary cause of Massacusetts’ loss of young professionals.
The [Center for Urban and Regional Policy] lecturers spoke at length on two subjects. First, their research has led them to the conclusion that 20-34 year old residents of Massachusetts are moving out-of-state […]
Via Brad DeLong, I see that Hal Varian has a piece in the Times on high housing prices that’s straightforward but one of the best short reads I’ve seen about the problem.
TO paraphrase Yogi Berra, it seems that houses are now so expensive that no one can afford to own one.
Of course, economists know […]
In fairness, while discussing Gibran Rivera’s gripes about the lack of affordable housing, I neglected to point out that there’s an overwhelming reason that increasing supply will not likely bring down housing costs for West Roxbury or most Boston neighborhoods: demand does not stay static but in fact increases as cultural and demographic trends lead […]
In a series of posts, John Keith does the math to show that housing is in fact affordable in Boston, at least by commonly accepted notions of affordability (a couple of slightly under average income, buying a two-bedroom condo for within 40% of their income).
As he writes,
My point in all of this isn’t about […]
Speaking of my neglected blogroll, I’d be remiss in not mentioning the excellent blog that Cambridge-based The Real Estate Cafe has set up to track the housing bubble. Their latest post points out a frightening Washington Post piece about the rise in Adjustable Rate Mortgages. ARMs are hardly bad in themselves (after all, the premium […]
Steve Bailey details the troubles of the Fenway Community Development Corporation in maintaining its own goals of affordable housing. It seems that the Susan S. Bailis center on the edge of the South End is trying to convert affordable units to market-rate, because the overestimation of market demand has led to a fiscal shortfall in […]
Lots of talk this weekend among Boston bloggers about a possible housing bubble. Derek at The Third Decade notes a couple of recent Globe and Times articles and wonders if there really is a bubble: “[W]hat’s the real likelihood that there’ll be an implosion or a bursting of the so-called bubble (famous last words, right)? […]
The Globe Magazine may be hitting its stride finally, with this fascinating piece on the Massachusetts housing market. It really captures the oddness of this boom. I for one never thought I’d be living in a city with the most million-dollar homes per capita in the nation (Cambridge) or a literal stone’s throw from a […]
Robert David Sullivan and Rachel Deyette Werkema of Commonwealth Magazine have a short piece in the Globe’s Ideas section giving graphic representation to the increasing unaffordability of Massachusetts housing. The following charts show the multiple of MA median income of the average house purchase price in the Commonwealth’s communities.
1999
2002
(source: Boston Globe, 4/9/04)
The median to […]
Brad DeLong comments on the housing bubble article I’d mentioned a few days ago.
Given the restrictions on supply–the unwillingness of San Francisco or Cambridge neighborhoods to look more like the Upper West Side or Newbury Street, the unwillingness of Berkeley and Lexington neighborhoods to look more like San Francisco or Cambridge, et cetera–the only […]
Go read Benjamin Wallace-Wells’ Washington Monthly article on the current housing bubble. Even more than the Economist’s survey on the topic, the piece explains the bubble, the likely economic fallout and the political dimensions in clear, readable terms.
As one of the overheated housing markets, Boston should pay special attention - currently the average home […]
The Economist has a polemic against New York’s rent control policies, which along with San Francisco’s are the strongest in the country, and with the most dysfunctional effects. The controls help mainly weathier tenants and do little for the poor in the outer burroughs. If nothing else, the historical track record of New York’s housing […]
The Economist has an excellent survey on the housing bubbles that seem to be appearing in the major industrial economies. Point by point, they take on the conventional wisdom (or maybe it’s no longer conventional wisdom) that the recent real estate boom is insulated from the kinds of speculation that drove the stock market to […]