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Jesus H. Christ
pray we don't turn into a place as bad as NYC (Manhattan,Brooklyn), Toronto, Vancouver, S.F., Miami.
Any data to backup that claim
Any data to backup that claim?
Or just one real estate agent who says he has worked with some foreign buyers?
It's money from every corner
...looking to beat the lower returns and interest yields in other kinds of investment.
It won't change until interest rates rise and the dollar becomes more valuable.
There are local property speculators, hedge fund operations, overseas buyers at the family and institutional level and so on.
And yet, I was just checking Trulia stuff for Fitchburg. I know it's grim but it's only 45 miles away and on commuter rail.
Multi family things are still running in the 60k to 200k range with a lot of inventory.
I know many are shells and it is a hell hole but it's still the distant edge of metro Boston in the same rough distance relationship Tacoma has to Seattle.
I haven't looked recently but I bet the spread of cost differences between those two cities is less than this spread between Boston and this little central Mass backwater.
Boston
Boston is the East Coast version of SF. I lived in SF from 1999 to 2006. No way I could afford it there now. All my family roots are here in Boston & I am lucky enough to have a lot of relatives who own real estate here that will rent to me for cheap. If I didn't have this going for me, I'd probably be living in Brockton or somewhere really far from the city or even leave entirely and head for Houston or somewhere else where there are a lot of jobs + cheaper housing options. I don't have any idea how anybody in 2014 could move to Boston and put down roots from somewhere else without having a ton of $$ or cool relatives here with rental properties (like me). I bet 10 years from now it is a lot more intense. Even Dudley Square is going to be full on gentrified pretty soon. Mayor Walsh seems like a smart & decent guy, so lets hope he can make sure Boston doesn't turn into an unsustainable city with room only for the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor like SF or Manhattan.
The Boston I knew in 1996
The Boston I knew in 1996-2006 wasn't exactly affordable. Are you saying that it's now more of the same, but just worse?
Investment?
I don't claim to be an investment expert but I thought the whole idea was to buy low and sell high?
Buying a 1000-1200 sq. ft home in todays market for $500k and up doesn't seem like a good investment to me. Even if one were to buy in Lexington, Newton, or one of the W towns, will a developer fork over over $500k for a knock down buildable lot?
I have a friend who looked in
I have a friend who looked in to buying in East Boston 3 years ago, but purchased land in Lexington instead for $700,000 and built a 4 bedroom 2 bath and sold it for $1.4 m a pre construction sale to someone in the far east...
You probably aren't getting much land for 500K
So you usually won't be able to build a large house (which would also be surrounded by smaller houses on probably less desirable streets) on the same lot. Most people who buy around that range just do the simple flip in those towns.
Something to say for Bermuda
And a host of other stable countries who don't allow foreigners to buy real estate in their countries.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
.
French Tourists
Clearly, it's all the French ex-pats buying in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan.
Why not?
In places like Savin Hill, Fort Hill, Neponset, etc. Rents and property values are reasonably high but not insane, it's safe to walk around at 2am and cops show in in less than 5 minutes when needed. Everyone knows each other and looks out for each other, local cops are everyone's best friends, and "teh poor" are well behaved because they know their neighbors won't tolerate typical ghetto behavior that's keeping French tourists out of "those" neighborhoods. What's not to like?
gotta look outside Boston proper
Still affordable along the Fairmount line all the way to Hyde park.....we'll see for how long? And prices along blue hill Avenue are still reasonable.....but low return on investment. So driven by investors?
Been going on for some time
I had classmates in the '80s whose extended families from abroad purchased condo properties for their family members to live in while attending college - graduate and undergraduates lived in them, and the older ones looked after the younger ones.
Even some US-based parents were doing this if they had multiple kids around and enough cash. Given the escalating real estate prices at the time, it was probably a good investment, too.
I wonder if people are investing while their kids are in school? Or if this is more like what is happening to NYC and London.
As someone who bought a condo
As someone who bought a condo in Allston in the last year, this is largely what I've seen going on. With the addition that many of these parents buy a condo for the kid and a condo for themselves for when they visit. Nearly every other buyer I saw fell into that category, and half the sellers.
And
Yuppies like YOU
Nice try
But we bought at the bottom of the market - a market so bad that the people we bought from sold for less than what they paid a few years earlier, so, at worst, we were merely helping stem the effects of a collapsing market.
Return on investment?
If people are buying at a high point of the market right now then I'm curious as to what they expect for return on investment and timeline (10-20 years)?
Multi-families will always bring in money from rent and I expect people to hold on to those for a long time.
For single family homes that are now selling >$500K for 1000-1200sq ft living space, and 6000-7000 sq ft lot. Will these really sell for $700k-800K in 10-20 years? Kind of scary to think that this is the price of a small home.
I guess it all depends what the market will pay.